High Noon

She is baking a pie, and baking it fast,
for whoever wins out there on Main Street today.
The pie is blueberry, of course, with heaps of butter
in the pastry — it's important to keep a man happy,
especially one who spends most of his life
playing with guns.
To the one in white,
who will be walking from the right,
she is engaged and, officially,
she wants him to win.
Walking from the left will be the one in black
with, at his neck, the red handkerchief she dropped
outside the store when he was nearby.
But what was she doing with a red handkerchief?
Well, psycho-analysis hasn't happened yet —
at least, not to her — so she hasn't the faintest.
Still, she can admit to herself that, unofficially,
she wants the one in black to win.
She would like to think that his worst sin
was to have knocked someone's elbow at a bar,
or to have killed a calf — when he was hungry —
up there in the hills — chewing a blackened steak
by the campfire… But it isn't so.
The one in white
hasn't killed anyone yet,
though he may be about to.
It will not trouble him if he does.
Whereas the one in black is clearly ravaged,
guilt has eaten into his eyes, grooved his cheeks,
because once, long ago, he killed a man.
Not by mistake, or pretending righteousness,
or for extreme need or greed, but in a hot blind anger
from which he feels he can never be free.
So today he half-wants to die,
though some part of him longs to repeat
that terrible act. Oh, the rats and angels
in the mazes of his mind!
She finds it most confusing —
all this conflict between whiteness and blackness…
Perhaps she should take to wearing grey?
But she is too young for that.
She puts on her frilled apple-green bonnet
and steps into the street.
The pie is in her basket.
She hasn't heard the shot yet.
Or shots… That pulls her up.
She thinks, "It's not much of a choice,
but it's nice to have one'. Then she sighs,
and walks a little faster towards Main Street.