The Story of a Marriage ... A Love Poem

The Story of A Marriage a love poem, by my friend Jerry, tells of a quality relationship - a story of two fulfilled lives.

"She stood there smiling,
pincurls showing under her patterned scarf,
the belt of her camel's hair coat
tied loosely in the current style,
grey plaid wool slacks,
brown brouges with split tongues,
her sparkling eyes lighting the hallway
outside Mr. Arnolds freshman English class..."


The Story of a Marriage ... A Love Poem
Gerald T. Perkoff

Before we knew it a dozen years had gone by,
the spring of youth was going from our step,
especially when we had to carry everything upstairs from
a garage buried
against a hillside.
So we moved to a condominium with everything
Marion needed
on one floor,
room for art,
and room for my Steinway,
we had loved it through all the years,
now it had a place of its own to be seen and heard,
a home where friends came,
to eat and drink and talk in a setting some
described as a museum,
using that word in its best context,
it was the first house we had ever thought of as more
than a collection of
bricks and boards,
it had a screened porch that promptly captivated Marion,
who calls it the best room in the house.
It is the place in which we began to plan for "old age."
For many old age is loss,
no more cool mountain streams,
no more star-gazing from beds of pine needles,
no more blazing passion,
yet for us it became the quiet contemplation of art and nature,
soft night sounds that illuminate the skies with gentleness,
the confidence that love can heal,
the certainty a hand will be there to help the creaky
rise from a chair,
the melding of two into more than one and less than two.
Yes, it is a time of diminished capacities,
yet love fills the crevasses of age and brings comfort to
lives that have become
this long poem
without a final line,
the continuing story of a marriage now sixty years long . . .

You can order "The Story of a Marriage..A Love poem