Tag: Marriage

Filling Station

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems15 Comments

Once
A woman and her husband
Stopped at this place

She, eight months with child
He, thinking about walking out
And the drive had been a tense one
Old wounds reopened
Fresh hurts on display

And an old couple was there
At the same time
Laughing while they pumped gas
They asked her when the baby was due

She said, “One month.”

The old man asked her husband
“Are you excited?”
“Nervous,” was the reply

“Don’t be. Just remember:
Loving someone
Who loves you back
Is the greatest thing in the world.
And your child
Will love you back.”

Forty-eight years later
The woman is no longer young
She stands at this abandoned place
Her young granddaughter in tow.
“What is this place?” the little girl asks

This place?
This is where your grandaddy and I

Decided to stay in love

(“Filling Station” – 8-15-2014)

{ holding still }

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems2 Comments 
today, this day, we have,
 but others had them, too —
 a place midst moving out and
 holding still —

the autumn sings a song of
 what is here and gone:
 a chorus we can hear, if
 we but will

i loved you in my time, and you
 have loved me, too;
 our limits, each, like blankets
 keeping warm

the essences of all
 our fleeting memories,
 the shapeless pattern,
 looking for a form —

but in this golden autumn, see
 or hear these words:
 or drink them, if you ever
 need a fill —

that what you’ve given me
 has always been enough,
 and to you, i’ll be always

 holding


 still

If I Like Sky

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

If I like sky could truer be
I’d make for you a canopy
Of wonder in the feathered day
And stars to shine at night

For what is this regard that calls
Us over time and out past walls
But nature, and its urge to grow
And move into the light?

If I like sky could cover you
I’d make a train of white and blue
For you to wear as you decide
My love, my life, my heart,

My bride

We ate dinner in silence…

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems1 Comment

We ate dinner in silence, both worn out,
But spicy Thai food woke us up again –
The dreaded day had come, and been born out,
Just like we thought it would, it had. But then

We drank and laughed and talked of other things.
She ate her massaman, I ate my beef;
There’re unexpected gifts life sometimes brings
When we are past all action but belief —

And as we left the place, I grasped her hand,
Which she squeezed back. No other words were said:
For lives are full of meanings, unexpressed —
Like living through a day
You’d come to dread

(11-7-2015)

… how close the far away

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original PoemsLeave a comment

Across the room a wooden table
Yellow tea lights flicker
The night is gathering her dress
To go amid the stars

And we in silence find abundance
Through the skylight glowing
As shadows dance across the bed
And every sound is ours

For we are physical and mental
Full emotions churning
And yet are centered to our core
To lie among the still

And see the lights of years ago
By our few candles burning
To feel how close the far away
Can be when we just will

Neon

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems3 Comments

She shines like neon,
Colorful,
Reflected on
The city streets

She sounds like rhythm,
Audible,
The feet that move,
The heart that beats

    She’s still the light that guides me home,
    The reason that I love the night;
    A better kind of power, that
    Makes sun seem tame, and rain seem right —

She tastes like neon,
To the eyes
That find no shining
Through the throes,

When at the end
Of this much day,
The sky may dark,
But still —

She glows

What She’s Like

On By Beleaguered ServantIn Original Poems4 Comments

She considers herself an average girl,
Who’s led a sort of mundane life:
This model-scientist-dancer-preacher
Who I happen to call my wife —

She was an entrepreneur for years;
She’s a volunteer when she sees a need:
She’s been a mother, a grandmother now,
And there’s not enough hours for her to read

All the books that we have, or she wants to have.
She’s curious and inquisitive;
She defends anyone who is ganged up on,
And knows, and believes, what it is to forgive —

She loves to move and she loves to laugh,
And she always gives comfort to those who mourn:
She as wonder-filled as the sea and the sky,
And’s had love in her heart since the day she was born —

She loves to come up with a better idea;
She lives to watch dramas that come from Korea,
She worries about the strange man that she wed,
But after a day, when it’s all done and said,

She closes the eyes on that beautiful face
Having made the world, my world, a much better place;
And I think, every morning, as I move the cover,
I can never quite say just how deeply

I love her