A decade, a smecade, who’s counting?
…
10 is a fitting piece of a hundred
* * *
Cawood says, you can’t make ‘em both
If you don’t make the first
Well…
You can’t make forever
Without squeezing the moment
In Kentucky
Our friends do better than us
You could have married
and had a house…
You could have married
And gone to Duck each summer…
You could have married
And travelled widely…
You could be dreaming
Of greener pastures now
I don’t know
But after 10 years, you’re here
And I’m here
And we don’t look the same
And we don’t feel smarter
And we’re probably not
And somewhere out there
We’ll pass
And forever will be about the time
Methusalah was potty trained…
But to us
Forever will be everything this side of eternity
And everything we make it to be.
Waxing eloquent fits my style
Like grits in a croissant…
You know that
But 10 years is a long time
To wax ineloquent…
10 years is a long time to wax anything
old, cold, indifferent to feelings
to be humbled by a beautiful soft-spoken
tissue smile
Given without warning to an
Indolent husband.
Tomorrow starts forever – minus 10…
When the clock strikes twelve…
Recanting is a 10 spot late
Reliving is an awkward state
Reveling is a natural reaction
Regretting is a threatening action…
The appropriate thing to do
On the diamond anniversary
Is to have red wine with beef,
White wine with fish,
Elbows off the table,
Sleeves rolled down
And something said with a Hallmark.
You could have had that too.
…but you chose me and I you
and we fools continue to choose
the other,
choosing to dent the plate occasionally
with a run, as convenient…
to take Stephy swimming,
to ponder what’s left of forever
minus 10…
with the same churning stomachs
of twenty,
a wallet of less than plenty
Yes, romance has been there everyday
Of the 3650
It was there in Kentucky, Indiana,
Tennessee, New Jersey, and Tennessee again…
It was there on I-70, I-74, I-64, I-81 and I-75…
It was there through the vicious
Spring cleanings,
All the missed commencements,
And the registration rites.
It’s been there in labor
And in rest,
In sickness and in health…
We recognized it at McKee
When Billy Jo McCalister
Jumped off the Tallahachee Bridge.
We recognized it when Roger died…
We recognized it when Tennessee accepted us
And when New Jersey let me go…
We recognized it on August 6, 1977
And on December 30, 1981…
I’m catching a faint glimpse of it
As we near the end of it.
Are you?
You’ve cried out of one eye and worked
With the other, I know that…
If we get less than forever, thanks for the 10.
10 cakes should be torched…fireworks
10 times the size of the 1982 World’s Fair
should be shot…
10,000 mimes should reenact Romeo and Juliet’s
dying embrace.
But we will go out and eat
And come home and hammer away
At life after 10,
And I’ll joke something macho like…
You treat me right and I won’t beat you as much
The next 10 years…
And I’ll mean:
God grant me the clarity to accept
As noble, a life with a P County girl
With enough sense to marry a Lee County boy
With barely enough sense to get out of the rain
And make him a “wandering poet”
With that beautiful, soft-spoken
Tissue smile given without warning…
To me
Tonight
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