Her man had given banking up and barbered

     (Back then, a clerk who married saw the door).

     It quieted a maggot that she harboured

     To say he was in business.  Come the war,

     He bore the unendurable at Vimy,

     Returned to her with tremors, head to toe;

     On Friday nights, she primped and did the shimmy

     With guys who’d found a reason not to go.

     Abed he lay for decades, mutely rusting,

     Unquietable anguish in his eyes,

     While she, between the cooking and the dusting,

     Was trying trav’ling salesmen on for size….

     That’s her behind the veil, arrayed in jet,

     The sorrow-wasted widow of a vet.

       note:  In the early days of banking, employees below a certain

       income level were forbidden to marry, lest they embezzle