Arleen Pare - ode to hazel white

Her name, I learned, the Sunday morning she was buried
was Hazel White. Referred to in earlier reports simply
as a family friend just dropping by.
Shot in the back,
killed in a northern town by a husband not her own,
bad luck, dropping by when the ex comes round with a shotgun.

How it was reported all that week: friend dropping by gets shot.
All week I puzzled at the happenstance:
was she sitting at the kitchen table having tea and
he decided to shoot her
instead?

Then Sunday morning radio, no one listening, reported her funeral.
Said how she died to protect her friend, stood with a plank
in her white-knuckled hands, against the man with a gun
outside the cabin where her friend lived with two daughters.

Hazel White warned him: you’ll never get your wife
unless you get by me. That’s what she said.

When he advanced
she swung
and missed.
He shot her as she wheeled around, between the shoulder blades.

She gave her friend
time to get away