Getting Away with It
In the hardware store you tuck
a chainsaw under your shirt
and walk out grinning like a grill.
In the pharmacy you glom handfuls
of expensive pills and pocket them.
In the bookstore you stand and read
a book right through and reshelve it.
Your thievery renders you ripe
as a potato fresh from the soil.
Should I congratulate you
or should I inform the police?
We walk in the old cemetery
where the skeletons have returned
to an elemental state, the stones
upholstered with aureate lichen.
Nothing for you to steal but
a handful of pinks you pluck
from the grave of a volunteer
who fell at Little Roundtop.
You’re the most subtle woman
in this village, yet you scorn
the loot you so handily scrounge.
What will you do with that chainsaw?
Give it to a starving logger?
What about those pills? Flush them
into a septic tank to remedy
a world of ungoverned sepsis?
Will you someday buy a book
to buoy the lonely bookseller?
The cemetery blushes with both
wild and domestic flowers.
If you could learn to blush with shame
you’d render yourself irresistible
and the village would forgive you
for being a secret crime wave
no one but me has noticed.
William Doreski lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire (USA). He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Venus, Jupiter (2023). His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals.