Our Concern for Mrs. Wembley

Our concern for Mrs. Wembley

Resides in silence

The silence of garden doors

And doors leading into gardens

And secret doors

Leading to secret gardens

Like the children's book Mrs. Wembley reads

Before she goes to bed at night

Our concern delivers itself

Like morning mail

To our front doorstep

Did you hear about Mrs. Wembley?

Well, honestly

Who hasn’t?

Her husband shutters their life

With blackened glass

And church bells

He sings low, listless tunes

As he wanders the property

And prays far too much

For a man whose wife

Has not been seen

In days and weeks

The flowers grow, untended

The vegetables rot

The roof sails off

To disrepair

Gossip grows

And nursery rhymes are written

About what might have happened

To the woman who lives

At 444 Fingerton Lane

And why nobody’s doing

Anything

About it

Our concern for Mrs. Wembley

Leads us to meetings

Where we discuss what we baked

For the meeting

And only an hour later

Do we get around

To discussing the missing woman

And her oddity of a husband

Some suggest pitchforks and fire

--An old-fashioned approach

When dealing with abnormality

Others prefer

A more subtle

And neighborly response

A knock on the door

An offering of cake or pie

A request to tour the grounds

And--

Oh yes, how is your wife?

We’ll peek around the husband

And see if we can spot

A doorway with light underneath it

Or a shadowy figure

Lurking at the top

Of a winding staircase

A dark stain of something
That might be blood

But after what seems like hours of debate

Pitchforks and politeness and pie

Will all fall by the wayside

As we decide

To do a considerable nothing at all

Folding chairs are put away

And chitchat is conducted

Regarding the new traffic light

At Fields and Franke

Our concern for Mrs. Wembley

Concerns us

In that for all we know

We are in the moment

When action

Could lead to prevention

And yet, we are inactive

We are indecisive

We are inert

We write letters to Mrs. Wembley

Inquiring as to her safety and security

But ultimately

We do not send these letters

Instead we tuck them away in a drawer

With spare pens

And fobs

Of different colors

Terrible nightmares rock our rest

At all the worst hours

In many of the worst ways

Corpses buried in a garden

Legs tumbling down sinister staircases

Fire consuming everything but a wedding ring

Belonging to a loving wife

Who only asked for the silence

Of garden doors

And for a friend or two

To mind her

When her back was turned

And though silence

Comes freely

Friends are fickle

And hard to find

Oftentimes sympathy

Is all you can muster

For others

And all you can want for yourself

When you feel someone behind you

In the darkest parts of the garden...

Though you want someone to cry out

The rose may drop

Before you hear their voice

Assuming they can raise it

Faster than they raise

Their concern