Divorce
by: Billy Collins
No more heavy ball,
just the sound
of the dragged chain
with every other step.
This poem is a little cynical. I suppose anyone who has experienced marital problems understands Collins' point, though. Even after a marriage ends, the two people involved will still be linked in some way forever--in memory or children or therapy or photos or music or poetry.
Next year, my wife and I will celebrate our thirtieth wedding anniversary. There are some people who would have bet large sums of money that we would never reach that milestone, myself included at times. It has been a rollercoaster of three decades. Because of mental illness and addiction, our marriage has teetered on the brink of collapse a few times. But here we are. Still together. In love.
The term "wedded bliss" paints a landscape of idyllic days and nights suffused with impressionistic light. But I know that marriage is not a Monet painting of water lilies. Marriage is hard, hard work.
I say all this with zero cynicism. It's the absolute truth in my experience. But that hard work is worth it in my experience, as well.
Saint Marty is blissed out on gratitude tonight.
Bliss
by: Martin Achatz
Sometimes it's wedded.
Sometimes you follow it.
It's sometimes ignorance.
But tonight it's a woodwind
section of peepers
tuning their voices
to spring.
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