Poetry Month

The Idea of Trust
by Thom Gunn

The idea of trust, or,
the thief. He
was always around,
"pretty" Jim.
Like a lilac bush or
a nice picture on the wall.
Blue eyes of an
intense vagueness
and the well-arranged
bearing of an animal.
Then one day
he said something
                               he said
all that trust is
an intimate conspiracy.

What did that
mean? Anyway next day
he was gone, with
all the money and dope
of the people he'd lived with.

I begin
to understand. I see him
picking through their things
at his leisure, with
a quiet secret smile
choosing and taking,
having first discovered
and set up his phrase to
scramble
that message of
enveloping trust.

He's getting
free. His eyes
are almost transparent.
He has put on
gloves. He fingers
the little privacies of those
who acted as if there
should be no privacy.

They took that
risk.
       Wild lilac
chokes the garden.

This reminds me of the book I'm currently reading: Coldest Blood.

The hardest lesson I ever learned was that trust shouldn't be given freely; most people would rather screw you over than look at you. Unfortunately, it's also a lesson I seem to keep having to relearn on a regular basis.