Mildred

Now I see how she felt for others
with generous heart and gentle tongue
Sun rises and noons through pine and apple leaves
had dappled her hands,
thinned her once-pert lips, public and private,
dried the honey dew off her blushing cheeks,
sucked the smooth and plump from everywhere,
leaving the delicate, fragile as tundra.
So who was she to aim a darted tongue,
turn up a nose? No one
No one might ever see her again
that acute arbiter, that accomplished hostess,
for the lover she was
that temptress in what way was she still a wife?
In what life did she last sink deeply into
being deeply sunken into?