VOWS FOR ALL SEASONS

In today's society of quick marriage/quick divorce, marital vows often are broken when the going gets tough. Blessed are those who don't run when serious illness visits their spouses.

     Only you in your sick bed, white-linened and frail, can hold me here under hearth arrest, stoking fires despite this oppressively hot July. A prisoner of love, I dispatch my imagination to go wandering beyond locked doors, run wildly free in the wafting jasmine of summer.

 

     How I envy the lowly unshackled ant! Imagine how it hardly casts a gray shadow, this speck of an Atlas, with crumb balanced on its back. Consider it dutifully wending its way in shade beneath a tree umbrella of sheltering sycamore branches towards its colonial hill.

 

     Meanwhile, the two of us are locked inside a lifelong promise to have and to hold in sickness and in health. Your tears of unbearable pain fall so easily now. I blot them gently with my trembling fingers.

 

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© 2008 Salvatore Buttaci

Reviews

[Sharon Miller Bolander]

Congratulations on your win! You handled a difficult topic very well. Having seen this scenario play both ways, I, too, commend those who honor their commitment to love through this life's final days. Nice work, Sharon

[angelinmypocket]

This is such a sad, beautiful story, remarkably well written. The visual aspect is such that the reader can see the whole scene of you and a beloved wife who is hopelessly ill. A vivid statement of profound love and devotion. Wonderful in the use of the ten words.
Love/Liz/angelinmypocket

[angelina neves]

full of sooooooooooooo sad felt emotions... "the two of us are locked inside a lifelong promise to have and to hold in sickness and in health. Your tears of unbearable pain fall so easily now. I blot them gently with my trembling fingers." and wouldn't it be more human and loveble and respectful of each other, to unlock prisions and fly freelly of the promisses?...

[Gandré]

'The trembling fingers!' This knocked be off of my feet, in this poem; your cirle is harmony, loving,taking care, it cintains a rich fare of wishes, beside didactic or any teachings. It's THE verse. I enjoyed very much.

[Salvatore Buttaci]

Helena,

Thanks for praising my poem "Vows for All Seasons," which I want to post for Tovli's contest, but it won't let me! It says the poem does not conform to the contest; however, I believe it does: it's a prose poem and it uses all the words required in the rules. How can we get it posted at Tovli's contest page?

Sal

[Helena]

Oh, this was perfectly poignant and beautiful and what we Starliters call
a "tissue alert".

The feelings evoked by this write of pure love and devotion resonnated
with me so much. You penned the absolute truth my friend, some do
run when the going gets tough....and may G-d bless those who stay "in
sickness and in health, forsaking all others"...

Well done indeed poet! Wonderful write for Tovli's contest....thank you
for sharing this lovely poem.


Helena