The Young Housewife

At ten AM the young housewife
moves about in negligee behind
the wooden walls of her husband’s house.
I pass solitary in my car.

Then again she comes to the curb
to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands
shy, uncorseted, tucking in
stray ends of hair, and I compare her
to a fallen leaf.

The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.



The poem is veiled. The silence suggests adultery or quiet suffering from the housewife. The dried leaf comment may comment on the lost beauty of the woman, a wife who is now in her waning years. It could also mean "fallen" like fallen from grace. The leaves on the ground crumble under the narrator's car, maybe like the suffering of a housewife who is confided to her husbands world.

The Adultery comes in from the multiple mentioning of deliverymen. That old saying "youre the mailman's son" undergirds a sexual connotation in the associations people have with the housewife. She is defenseless and must be protected from her husband, but this house wife is young and vulnerable, able to be messed and made indignant, as her "uncorseted" image emerges from the house.

David Darner