BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

A Birthday Note for my Wife of 47 Years

The chairs and lounges were taken from the beach

years ago, and the gate closed and locked. Over

the ocean, far from our window

a windswept moon rises into dark night.

Far away rollers ride the sea, their sound arriving

out of darkness, and white surf crashes on the sand.

We look at each other, now older than we were.

Nodding, we know what was once unknown.

mek            May 26, 2010

 

Bernie & Sylvia ca.1907

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

INVICTUS
by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.


In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.


Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.


It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com


If you had the choice of two women to wed,
(Though of course the idea is quite absurd)
And the first from her heels to her dainty head
Was charming in every sense of the word:
And yet in the past (I grieve to state),
She never had been exactly "straight".

And the second -- she was beyond all cavil,
A model of virtue, I must confess;
And yet, alas! she was dull as the devil,
And rather a dowd in the way of dress;
Though what she was lacking in wit and beauty,
She more than made up for in "sense of duty".

Now, suppose you must wed, and make no blunder,
And either would love you, and let you win her --
Which of the two would you choose, I wonder,
The stolid saint or the sparkling sinner?

Robert William Service

I don't know,I chose the saint and am much the happier for it.