Auckland Poetry.com

Tanka

Transport drivers strike
Two days later empty shops
No milk for the child
Wretchedly helpless we are
In our shiny democracy

Settling of Scores

At tap on my shoulder an elderly woman asked:
“aren’t you…?” With my lazar eyes I piled off
make up and old skin and saw a much younger
face; yes I knew that young woman and I also
remembered her hard eyes when she left me and
I begged her to stay. She invited me for a bit to
eat, I declined said, perhaps some other time, and
anyway knowing her of old I would have ended
up paying. She was a widow now (like I should
care) gave me her late husband’s card with phone
number and email address, “ring me”, she said.
I walked away another “what if, gone” I ought to
thank someone. Magnanimous I’m not, revenge
taste good at any age.