IRENE

Irene sits at a table alone.
Not wanting to be bothered
with idle chit chat.
I wonder if she thinks in German.
Irene’s husband was the brains
behind Von Braun, they say.
And maybe he was.
She walks in the icy cold
and torrid heat.
She never stops walking
yet she talks to no one.
I fathom her apartment
a library of sorts.
No TV.
Old newspaper clippings,
in musty scrapbooks,
books of German poetry.
Irene seems more content
than the others
as she walks through her
last years in solitary satisfaction.