Lone Walker

On my street, walk intriguing life stories.  
Secrets are revealed in stride and posture.  
Those of extreme gait are most emphatic  
Yet, so mystifying, that I could write,  
For each, alternative biographies.  
 
The woman is old, yet tall and big boned.  
Her upper body is angled at least  
Forty-five degrees to the hips and waist.  
She climbs the modest hill to the bus stop  
Like a mountaineer up a sheer rock face,  
With stick, half an hour for fifty metres.  
 
She never relaxes her determined scowl,  
Avoiding eye contact with all who pass  
So insistently self affirming that  
To offer support would seem insulting.  
 
Long term residents know another story.  
In a wheelchair, she was pushed up the hill  
By a man, for whom she was little more  
Than a convenient theatrical prop.  
 
Similar age, he looked much fitter, yet  
Over dramatized his toiling effort.  
When a woman or girl passed, he paused  
To make lewd, crude and suggestive remarks.  
His task gave him relative immunity.  
For his charge, repeated ignominy.  
 
The man has gone. Perhaps an odd woman  
Welcomed his proposal. Or another  
Battered him so badly that he is  
Now in timeless medical custody.  
Either outcome is possible in my street.  
 
Poetic justice would have his patient  
Gather her strength; murder; put the body  
In the freezer. As elderly care goes  
In our community, none would notice.  
And the women of the locality  
Would swear he had gone to Vladivostok.  
 
Many morals for this tale are possible.  
The obvious will do. Solitary  
Self-sufficiency is never worse  
A state than intolerable coupledom.