I love you forever

Our history in a love poem

I love you forever

I thank good fortune we are at home
and not abroad in the car,
lest we run afoul of a bored constable
who might deem me drunk, besotted as I am by the entirety of you.


How clear it must be to all and sundry
how completely I am captured,
how my heart and soul are held by you
until the end of time.


Ah, yes - Time. It seems to me the merest blink
since our eyes first met,
yet decades have rolled and roiled past
the cosseted cocoon of our love.


But how slowly that cocoon grew!
That first tentative thread
spun in silence, awaiting casting,
held back by timidity and shyness.


Discovering your name
- an adventure all its own -
meant asking another girl,
"Who is your friend?"


The question fraught with danger:
a teacher's dislike of talky students,
the girl friend who could have declined
or sabotaged my quest with a wrong name.


Fortune's sly grin gave me your name,
and reminded me you could be seen daily,
flute in hand, across a small pool of woodwinds
from my perch at the end of the brass section.


Clumsy surveillance led me to your locker
for "chance" encounters away from laughing eyes,
away from teens outwardly confident and clearly
possessed of social skills far superior to mine.


Through History and Band we slowly grew closer,
eventually walking together to both,
a chaste, budding friendship,
though I hoped for more.


But 'more' means a date, which I'll have to request
and pray the response is a positive one,
and asking needs courage - and I don't have much -
but desperate want helps me plan out my words.


The venue's my Rambler - not new, but it runs -
I mention a drive-in, ask if she would go,
then cudgel my heart into keeping its beat,
awaiting my fate: if it's "No", then we're doomed.


"I guess" sounds like "YES!" to my hopeful ears
and planning proceeds for our Friday night fun.
A burger and root beer kicked off our first time,
and Walter and Carol

Matthau and Burnett in Pete 'n' Tillie (1972)

amused us somewhat.


The drive back to your place sticks most in my mind,
as Dad's F-100 failed to accommodate
my goal of some closeness
on our trip through the night.


The cab was so roomy, 'we' could have been four,
and shifting was dodgy, with four-on-the-floor.
But when you slid over and accepted my arm
o'er your shoulders, I pledged it would remain that way.


The fullness of time saw us married with kids,
with sadness a stranger, 'til that fateful day
the doc said the words that none wants to hear
"'til death do us part" wasn't some far-off year.


And now half our bed says each night that you're gone,
but our love continues to sustain me throughout
the days I have left, until that blest day
we join hands forever and ever and say, "I love you."



[LC: 64 / 16 stanzas]

Prompt / Form Note ▶︎

Prompt: "For your love is better than wine; your anointing oils are fragrant;." ¬ Song Of Solomon 1:3
Write a Free Verse poem (20 stanza min.) about the given prompt.
Form: Free Verse

Written for "Search for a WDC HeartThrob Poet "