PART I: Midlife Crisis
She said:
Do not protest another year of life
as year on year into each other run,
mark not the dusk as a dying of the sun,
nor let the twilight cause unquiet strife.
Though in the deepening night lie shadows rife,
do not believe your cheer this year is done.
When webs of pain about your joints are spun,
do not protest another year of life.
Yet let this time be summer of your years;
It is this time that is compared to gold;
Your back is yet unbowed with care and fears
and still your spirit shines forth true and bold.
We – grey hair and aching joints all belie  –
will find our youth within each other’s eye.

PART II:  Suspicion
It’s not the way that silence cloaks the rooms;
he sits and sighs; she lives within her books;
she speaks;  he doesn’t hear nor even looks,
she reads and tries to block out strange perfumes
while deep inside her, knowledge slowly blooms.
He works too late to eat the love she cooks.
His temper short, she walks on tender-hooks;
Within their walls a confrontation looms.
There’s nothing worse than knowing she’s ignored,
that maybe someone else has his regard
She’s hiding from the truth, resentment stored
and building to the crux; true trust dies hard.
One day he comes home reeking of cologne,
“Nice try,” she whispers, and the seed is sown.




PART III:  Discovery
She lived with stale deceit and loathsome lies,
a dull and dispirited songbird of the night;
a speechless Lavinia hiding from sight
of he who threw away the marriage ties.
In the garden of lies and false intent
were harridans who in that marriage saw
stray bits and pieces that they stole and rent;
with laughter salted unfelt wounds more raw.
If she again finds love within his eyes,
offers her heart to he who laid it waste-
she prays that his integrity will rise,
discern her jewel- discard his pets of paste.
At home amidst the mercy she has rife
his heart will then lie naked for her knife.


PART IV:  Leaving
Her nature cries to leave this hostile land,
This cactus-ridden rock where she’s been kept:
Riding into what looked like a sunset,
Instead dusk ended in this hell of sand.
The lies have formed an ever tightening band
Across her chest and head, her heart is reft
of love, hate, anger; she is berefit -
Eat too much crow and talons grow on hands.
Yet there are conduits she still will not swim;
What’s left to them now?  Only bone and scrap.
The curtains close and all the lights are dimmed,
Call out the butcher, tell him it’s a wrap;
The heart exists only to drain blood;
Rain in the desert still is only mud.

PART V:  Forgiveness**
This she knew, all beauty soon becomes lost,
love and trust simply carts for grief and pain,
the buds that promised blossoms in the rain
grew black and shriveled at too great a cost.
The marriage ties too soon became encrossed
with kids, in-laws, resentment unrestrained;
this she knew, that nothing gold could stay
and all she gained would soon degrade to loss.
Self-fulfilling, of course the love would end,
her trust like glass lay shattered and deformed.
But in his tears she felt the moment bend
and like a barren tree out in a storm
she felt the glimmer of another life
Storm-wrecked, sure, but still as man and wife.