Alibi

There’s an untrue rumor that I can’t dispel
about a certain ruby ring found within my cell.
They’ve just heard from my lawyer, but haven’t heard from me
about why that ruby ring was not beneath the tree
with my lawyer’s wife’s name on it, for she’d seen the receipt
in his bottom desk drawer and, thrilled with the deceit,

thought, “It is a gift for me. I’d better feign surprise.”
But in fact she had no need at all for this disguise,
for there was no tiny box with her name upon it—
no ruby ring within it, waiting for her to don it.
Instead, a brand new blender turned out to be her present,
and can you guess that her reaction wasn’t very pleasant?

Just where was the ruby ring? Her angst knew no restraint
as former suspicions resumed with no constraint.
His frolics with his secretary he’d declared long over.
Was he lying to her? Was he still a rover?
Her honeyed voice escaped her. Her shrieks grew shrill and scary.
How could her husband leave her arms to screw his secretary?

That’s how one more deception about the jewel missing
ended with me out on bail and my lawyer kissing
his wife for once, declaring how he preferred her culture
to any lowly secretary, then went on, the vulture,
saying how I stole the ring right out of his pocket
before he left my jail cell and heard the jailer lock it.

Now he said he’d go and if the warden didn’t mind it,
he’d do a search through all my cell to see if he could find it.
Then quickly, he reclaimed the ring to slip upon a ledge
underneath my mattress, at the very edge.
The fingers of his mistress and his wife were the same  size,
and so his wife was placated as she slipped on her prize.

And the diamond ring that he bought his secretary
after he took her ruby back was indeed so very
much bigger and expensive that she didn’t mind
exchanging her first Christmas rock for a better kind.
And rudely roused and blamed, fresh from my Christmas nap,
I had no objection, charged with another rap.

For my lawyer paid my bail and also said that he’s
defending me pro bono—foregoing any fees!!!

Prompt words today are just, dispel, frolic, constraint, culture and ruby.