Don’t Tell Paul, But …
Sometimes love takes back the shoes, burns the cake,
spoils the rice, impedes the truest of minds,
takes us to an ever-fixed mark at the edge
of doom, then alters its course to leap deep
in the Hudson. It comes with a compass,
swings its scythe squarely at the ritual
where everyone promises forever.
And the smart ones call their analysts,
who say there is a human life at stake,
that time and pattern and lonesomeness
and ruin have made fools of us all. Still,
how romantic that we will run past fears
and friends and priests, our arms out wide to love –
that we’ll gamble on the simple words ‘I do.’
– Drawn from Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 and Sondheim’s “Getting Married Today”
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Rodd Whelpley manages an electric efficiency program for 32 cities across Illinois and lives near Springfield. His poems have been nominated for The Best of the Net anthology and the Pushcart Prize. His chapbooks include Catch as Kitsch Can (2018), The Last Bridge Is Home (2021), and Whoever Said Love (2022). Blood Moon, Backyard Mountain (2023) is his first full-length collection. Find his work at www.RoddWhelpley.com.
Stone Poetry Quarterly 