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 May 2021 Don Bouchard
Steve
From sixteen to sixty
And all the days in between
From a lassie then a lady
To the woman in my dream
From sketch book to painting
From wondering and waiting
To building and creating
With fireworks and gold plating
From all that you mean
To being my queen
From nowhere to forever
And all the days in between.
Later this year my wife turns 60! I've written this with that in mind.
How do you tell if she’s a lady,
When she’s turning eighty five?
She doesn’t wear much jewelry
No furs or fancy styles.

She doesn’t play croquet,
But likes to root instead through dirt.
Her uniform’s a crumpled hat,
Old shoes and a muddy shirt.

You can find her on any sunny day,
Outside in all weather,
Stacking stone and hauling hay.
Collecting white stones & robin feathers.

But don’t dare swear or she’ll object!
Don’t watch **** TV or
She’ll tell you what to do instead:
“Rake some leaves or sweep this floor!”


She might strike you as old Rose Sayer,
Prim, proper and cold.
And to God each night she’ll say a prayer,
“Jesus please, don’t let me get old!”

Dedicated to Mom, Who Believes in Living Forever
Mom is 91 now and bed-ridden, sadly, but she had, as they say, a good innings, using most of it up on yard work which made her feel good (for some odd reason)...
When she first met him,
He was so slim;
A gentleman,
To begin.
When she first met him.

When he first met her,
She was so demure;
She'd defer,
Often concur.
When he first met her.

She'd smile on him.
He'd open doors.
She cooked and worked.
He worked and cooked.

Good morning, my Dear.
Good night, my Love.
I got groceries.
Did you get milk?
I called your Mother.
Is your Father okay?
Teacher interviews at five.
I'll drive.
Did you get to the bank?
I made an appointment.
What's the address?
Your sister's on her way
.

This was their dialogue
On that day.

She's kind.
He's a find.
He's hers.
She's his.

Ever the twain shall meet.
Serpentine of hard green sheen
Born in hydrothermal’s spleen
Where pressured, metamorphosed plate,
Converged at boundaries’ Vulcan gate
To lay in tumbled disarray
Where octopi and dolphin play.

From olivine and pyroxene
Derived the crystal serpentine
Through Hellfires’ metamorphic fate
Now crystalized to Greenstone state.

There lying in the golden light
Of mountain stream in tumbled sight
Refracting in the morning sun
That glint of green since time begun.

M.
That glint of green, a jade boulder
in the tumbling mirth of a plummeting
mountain stream in New Zealands'
wild Southwest.
Jacksons Bay
Fiordland National Park
June 2017
A explanation delivered to Karinnjinba of the meaning of this poem.

Convergent plate tectonics cause subterranean layers of mineralization to be exposed in the process of mountain formation.
This poem is a celebration of the formation of greenstone through its transitions from from serpentine a glassy green layer situated twixt the continental plate and the mohorovic discontinuity...through exposure to intense heat from nearby magma intrusion and the incredible pressure applied in its upward ****** to the light. The transfer through crystalization, in the heating and cooling of the rock through its passage to its discovery as a water worn boulder in an alpine stream...Greenstone or Jade or Pounamu as the Maori call it....A magnificent, translucent, glassy green rock carved and valued, historically by the maori as cultural taonga and weaponry and valued worldwide as a classic gemstone of metamorphic origin.
M.
Just the other day
I noticed little things
Were going missing:
Thimble,
Spectacles,
Needle,
Fifty cent piece.

I found it particularly queer
How these objects disappeared.
I don't think I misplaced them
Perhaps my mind erased them.

[Later that week]

Today is my birthday.
Tilly, my granddaughter,
Presents me with a
Needlepoint magpie.

My heart finds incandescent joy.
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