How We Didn't Tell Her

[MoonyLuna]

that the housekeeper said that
the gardener said that
someone named

Jean or Jeannie or Jenny
who was his friend or maybe
his boss had said that

today that just
today he was hit by a car
& he was killed he died

at once in the prime
of his handsome youth he
who was her youngest her

onetime baby ice-cream
cone with dimpled arms
& scrumptious tummy he

who gardened & prayed
for purity on earth
but we said let's wait let's

wait to tell her till we're
sure & we called the gardener
the housekeeeper the irrigation lady

the police the coroner
the highway patrol the neighbors
we called everyone but her

until at last the gardener
said no no how could the housekeeper
get it so wrong it wasn't

him it was someone else who was
hit by a car and killed
today & we rejoiced & were

glad we hadn't told her because
his handsome flesh his pulsing
prime returned to us as a gift

more precious than before
& as for the other one, the other
mother's son who really died

today we let him go we
didn't give him
another thought.


copyright
Sandra M. Gilbert

[MoonyLuna]

Featured Poet
Sandra M. Gilbert


Sandra M. Gilbert has published eight collections of verse, including, most recently, Kissing the Bread: New and Selected Poems 1969-1999, which won the American Book Award for 2000, and Belongings, which appeared in 2005. A professor emerita of English at the University of California, Davis, she is currently at work on a book tentatively titled "The Culinary Imagination: How (and Why) We Write, Work and Play with Food in the 21st Century."