What Romance Requires:

Eyes That See

The Soaring Twenties Social Club (STSC) is a group of writers and artists who strive to do their best work, and to help each other. June's Symposium volume wil be on Romance, however defined.

 This poem was written for the Symposium. It is the story of a long married couiple and how they stayed together, why that might be worth fighting for.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

My grandfather to my grandmother in 1923--100 years ago! For Life Companionship

I promise: –

To look for and believe in a high and noble intent in all you do and say, ever to put the best construction on all you do and say;

To give you gladly and cheerfully absolute freedom from arbitrary restraint or coercion;

To anticipate as far as possible your wishes;

To take up for you every possible burden and carry it with you;

To drop all non-essential differences of opinion;

To be counted open-minded on essential differences, willing to wait until we can agree;

To give the good-natured answer or silence always when spoken to harshly;

To be true to you in thought, word, and act;

To be frank and honest with you in everything, giving you my absolute confidence;

To as far as in me lies, live up to your ideal of me and not your expectations;

Finally, to hold our mutual love a sacred thing in life, to guard it, to guard it and cultivate it at all cost.

Love is respect, confidence, sympathy, understanding, forbearance, loyalty, common suffering, kindness, and generosity.

                                                                                                                     Wilbur

 What Romance Requires 
 
Youthful years when first we met,
magnets pulled north to south,
tinder ablaze, but not spent.
 
The fires of passion once lit,
consumed the green wood of our youth,
flames leaped high, logs cracked and split.
 
Split logs, early discord, confusion,
two souls joined but not pulling in tandem, 
different goals and standards.
 
Twenty years to figure out you couldn't 
read emotions. I didn’t know. I didn’t ask. 
I thought you didn’t care.

Years of frustration, heartache–
I was blind. If I raged, cried, you walked away, 
Confused, heart stricken, not knowing what to say.
 
We needed time for rebuilding, for healing.
You weren’t who I thought I had married, 
so I needed to love you, and tell you my feelings.
 
Patient endurance produced spousal fruits:
quiet forgiveness, trust, acceptance, love,
humility, hope, blessed peace, few disputes!

Now hopes, dreams, losses lived, love
engraved in our flesh, surrendered
as mutual gift, tender and tough.
  
Stoked embers of age glow golden, warm.
We've turned a new page. Take my arm 
as we come to life's last dusky stage.