This poem celebrates my forty-two year marriage to Daphne. It started life as free verse, but gradually, without my conscious design, iambic pentameters started to elbow their way in. Finally I realized that my sub-conscious was wiser than my conscious; iambic pentameters, with their remorseless di-DUM, di-DUM, are the very thing for conveying the brutal march of time.
Persistence of vision
Maybe the outline always has been blurred.
You stand before me, upright, curly-haired
And blonde, your blue eyes steadfast, thoughtful, kind.
Attraction blossoms, sight leads on to touch
And we become, as near as dammit, one.
Then two are three and four and more, a girl,
A boy, another girl; skin stretches, care
Writes lines of love upon your loving face.
The days, though gentle, tug and dull and hurt
And suddenly the curly hair is grey,
The skin is scarred. Despite the pain, you will
Not bow your head; your courage is undimmed.
The person that you were is who you are.
Wisdom and love defeat the passing years.
Autumn Leaves 