October 30: "Poem on the Three Hundreth Anniversary of the Trinity School," Things We Celebrate, Wife's Birthday

There are things we celebrate every year--Halloween, Christmas, New Year's Eve, wedding anniversaries, birthdays.  These days can fill us with nostalgia, joy, sadness, hope, and/or despair.  They're place markers, reminding us to pause, reflect, give thanks, pray, eat cake, buy presents, dress up.  

Billy Collins celebrates an milestone . . .

Poem on the Three Hundreth Anniversary 

of the Trinity School

by: Billy Collins

When a man asked me to look back three hundred years
Over the hilly landscape of America,
I must have picked up the wrong pen,
The one that had no poem lurking in its vein of ink.

So I walked in circles for days like a blind horse
Harnessed to an oaken pole that turns a millstone,
A sight we might have seen so many years ago--
Barley being ground near a swift and silent millrace--

Which led to other sights of smoky battlefields,
The frames of houses, then a tall steeple by a thoroughfare,
Which I climbed and then could see even more,
A nation being built of logs and words, ideas, and wooden nails.

The greatest of my grandfathers was not visible,
And the house I live in was not a pasture yet,
Only a wooded hillside strewn with glacial rock,
Yet I could see Dutch men and women on an island without bridges.

And I saw winding through the scene a line of people,
Students it would seem from their satchels and jackets,
Three hundred of them, one for every school year
Walking single-file over the decades into the present.

I thought of the pages they had filled
With letters and numbers, the lifted bits of chalk,
The changing flag limp in the corner, the hand raised,
The learning eye brightening to a spark in the iris.

And then I heard their singing, all those voices
Joined in a fluid chorus, and all those years
Synchronized by the harmony of their anthem,
History now a single chord, and time its key and measure.

My wife celebrate a milestone today--another successful trip around the sun.  We have been together, as a couple, for about 34 years, married for 29.  That's a long time of togetherness.  Yet, she can still surprise me, make me laugh, drive me up a wall, remind me that I'm loved.  

We went out to eat tonight--a Cajun restaurant that is my wife's favorite.  Our kids were with us, and we sat at the table, eating, drinking, and laughing for almost two hours.  We didn't rush.  Everyone set aside their cell phones (a remarkable feat) and basked in the joy of just being together.  

It was a wonderful time, honoring my beautiful, courageous, hard-working wife.  We have seen each other at our bests and our worsts.  That's sort of what happens in a marriage.  Despite all kinds of challenges, we have endured as a couple.  And that is something else to celebrate.

Her name is Beth, and she is the love of Saint Marty's life.