A Warm, Safe Haven [revised] Poem by Margaret Alice Second

You tasted bitterness and shame of a client rejecting
your every attempt to aid this uncouth, boorish man
using expletives when talking to women, such an old
criminal, misleading your company about his income,
trying to get away with swindling by insulting you

As you explain about your rising stress levels, a great
weight lifts from my heart – your fleeing life, going to
bed earlier at night, me wondering whether you’ve
had a paramour, then you explained crimes this man
perpetrates, blackening your name, I understood,
glad it’s not an imbroglio

As you plan buying takeaways, sending our official
driver recently licensed, I smile knowing that our
little world is sacred to you and you would never
endanger it in that way, look at your smiling face
representing a warm, safe haven

24 July 2013