Postures

by Barbara Westwood Diehl

She was a woman of excellent posture,
black sheathed and belt cinched at the waist,
a helmet of pure white, perfectly parted hair,

and the most earnest, concerned black eyes
behind round, designer eyeglass frames
I have ever seen. You could almost believe 

anything beautiful she told you was beautiful.
A painting by a local artist, award winning, actually,
the light on a seeded slice of cantaloupe 

showing exactly the right slant of sun and shade.
Oh, and how delicious the jams and how
long lasting the small soaps and how soft 

and how subtle the colors of cashmere scarves
she handled with such assurance, such rightful
possession, you knew you couldn’t 

possibly afford to purchase even one of them.  
Though you did accept her offering of a beverage
and maple bacon walnuts in a paper cup,

munched while sniffing cellophaned cinnamon candles
and riffling through a rack of silver bangles
until she drew your attention with a flicked wrist

to the most clever, even functional, oyster shuckers
and away from windows to the too still street
of hollowed and shuttered buildings

in Princess Anne—and what a lovely name for a place
with a shop filled with jams and paintings of the shore--
and the slumped corpses of bustling commerce,

some memorialized by historic plaques, blackened
against the patina of time, others as much a mystery
as the names on graves across the street, rubbed

unreadable, and men in shapeless coats as dark as mine
and skin the color and texture of Manokin River silt,
hunched in silent threes at Junior’s Stop N Shop,

greeting passersby with nods and exhaled smoke,  
their own small clouds to add to all the clouds above,
their words in oyster shells snapped shut and tucked

in black coats of secret pockets, dark and deep as mine,
where, if not watchful, a woman of good posture
might not find a scented soap or shucker.