I have clean hands
says the butcher
pulling off his gloves
and passing along his apron
to the doctor stood there waiting
for his turn at the trough.
The doctor's wife also standing
but back there in the doorway
wearing muted pink
has that drowning sense
like sudden vertigo
that things are about to change.
One man makes a statement
another accepts it as thus
and her years of cornfields
and clean living are as dust
in a blind goat's tea
all meaningless.
There is no power
in the Good Wife business
just a trailing on behind
while always wondering
what side of the bed was it
that the day got out of.