20150803 (turmoil)

If a man’s eyes don’t roam check him for blindness

At least for me it’s a sin I confess every week

Out of a habit I find as hard to break

Blame evolution that gave us this itch

I told my Jean it served her well

When I settled on her and I loved 

Her for understanding a need to cut slack

After all it’s damned automatic to glance

At a bosom a thigh a calf or a face

When she’d see my gaze wander 

A loving kick under the table 

To my shin was enough to shake the grip 

Some young thing claimed on my vision 

The sin part was when you’d keep

Going back to the horizon in hopes of 

Resighting the marvelous vessel that 

Plundered your eye first time around

Best recovery was to look her 

Straight in the eye thinking

You are the one I love that I’m taking 

Home from every dance forgive me 

I have so many bad reflexes but

I always come back looking at you

Never said this straight out never tried

To defend when I clearly was wrong

Yours is the only face I will stare on

When we make or remake all

Our promises to be stronger

It is impossible though not to note 

Changes a weekly pizza and ice cream

Can wreak on a body mine included

Growing paunch pant sizes accelerating

Childbearing left scars on her body

Beer-bearing was hardly an honorable claim

Yet when it was entirely over

Her death a knife to be withdrawn 

Still in my side I realized in my mind

She had always been 

The lovely young woman

Seated across the table from me

At the Fireside Inn on the town square

Don't Google it's not there anymore

Of Bloomington Indiana bewildered

But pleased by my shockingly 

Early proposal I had nothing to offer

Dropped out of school with poor grades

Cannon fodder for a growing war overseas

No job prospects and a history

Of emotional imbalance the plan

Insane as it was was to get out of Dodge

Get a job get a shrink start saving for a

Wedding in August next year

What a terrible gamble 

Especially when I placed a hold

On my promise after the invitations

Had already been printed bitter sorrow for 

Both of us and I can’t tell you

How we got through to marry 

Happily in late October

My mom still gritting her teeth

She wouldn’t come couldn’t 

You marry some nice Catholic Polish girl

From Cleveland no you have to get

Into some family we know nothing about

When my heart gets soppy and soft like today

I can still picture her at the Fireside

I’m so grateful she made the worst

Mistake of her life and 

Said yes to me

c. J.S.Manista, 2015