Playing Safe

Suburban mother, neat, ash-blonde, divorced,
might pause beneath a Bedford bookstore awning,
then check her list - lasagne, liverwurst ...
today pilates, Thursday, coffee morning.

One week is like another, which is fine
(note on the fridge -- "collect new reading glasses").
She'll pass on Starbuck's (have you SEEN the line?)
The bovine bustle of the middle classes.

Ten years ago, I struck like Typhoon Trevor,
intense and strange. Endearments and demands
brought whiff of chaos. "Picket fences never
restricted me."  I left with empty hands.

She went for bourgeois bland, for safety's sake,
and never sees what's churning in her wake.