Madge-World: Welcome to it.

SONNET THIRTY-SEVEN    For Margaret, July 6, 2011

You are always with me, Margaret, I see you everywhere,

In shoes left in every room, in that pile of underwear,

In books bought and never read, in the things around the house,

The pot upon the stove for days, the chair that wears your blouse.

Like a pebble underfoot, both the burr beneath and saddle,

You irritate, exacerbate, and set my nerves a rattle.

We clash, it seems, by design, like stripe and plaid together,

I, cold as raw December; you, a woman of all weather.

“Odi et amo,” Catullus sang, with Roman pith and passion,

Capturing both love’s allure and its bitter ration,

Yet he knew it draws us in, like cheese the hungry rodent,

With the promise of that speechless, timeless, everlasting moment.

And so it goes, and so we mark, thirty years and seven,

This partnership, this pact; this glimpse, I feel, of heaven.