Dowager At A Garden Exhibition (Poetry)

It was the flesh of seventy or more summers
put on show — too much of sag and folded skin
where once, one might suppose, was texture smooth with
                                sun’s soft glow
of health and youth — a tender subtle freckling

instead of age spots merging into lakes pigmented brown
among a wrinkled landscape — contours crumbling — ruined
as a slow motion avalanche — the whole mountainside unsteady
and slipping, sliding — obeying gravity — came plunging down...

No modesty of cleavage — those tired sun-withered dugs
swung free beneath thin fabric with no elasticity or way
to harness them or offer some vestige of dignity —
she cut a cruelly comic figure — obscene — cartoon-like — sad.

She wobbled down the June-hot lawn — an ancient melting jelly
in a mould that barely fitted — failed to hold
the excess of her years — curb flabbiness — the undisciplined
dance of bust and belly embarrassed all but her.

No one acknowledged it — everyone too polite
to stare — at least for long — the spectacle
too revealing for comfort — her faux pearl necklace looping
like a slack halter on a worn out nag.

On she came and stood before us —
possibly she didn’t catch the glances we exchanged
or sense the awkward stifled shame of conversation
unable to get past the pity that struck us nearly dumb

while she, good-natured, chatted on unselfconsciously —
the true eccentric with no concern for how she might be judged
for dressing as she did — so unconventionally —
but she made her point — deliberately or not.