Gossip

She always asks you, How is so-and-so?
--Her wary eyes as self-contained as beads.
She takes each anecdote and makes it grow,
or keeps it like a farmer hoarding seeds.
Conscious of being one who never fell,
Who never laid a single brick on sand,
She sees her neighbor stumbling to hell
And points a little plump triumphant hand.
When one is middle-aged and well-to-do
And free of care, existence might be flat
If fascinating troubles did not brew
In other lives, to taste in private chat
Before the cozy fire-- a cup of tea
Precarious on a well-toasted knee.


---Elizabeth Bohm, from Poetry magazine, February 1941