Dr. Seuss said it first:

How did it get so late so soon?

It's night before it's afternoon.

December's here before it's June.

My goodness how the time has flewn.

How did it get so late so soon?

It is getting late in life, and we have all had people post us those cute little cartoons or aphorisms about our aging generation. Don't send me any more; I can't remember the last batch, and as for my place in the history of the 20th century, my body provides all the reminders I need. But here's one that comes pleasantly to mind every summer. I'll recapture part of it from the dedication in the very first book I ever printed – a collection of love poems for Beverly recalling our earliest times together.

On the first day of summer school 1974 at the University of Victoria, our communication class formed itself into two concentric circles with the inner facing out, outer facing in and began to move step by step to the right. When the prof told us to stop, we looked across at our partner for the day's exercises and started talking. Beverly remembers this tall hunk with a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and I recall this sun-bronzed beauty with eyes you could fall into. I was a single parent in Victoria; she was up from a CUSO job in Jamaica. From that summer day at Uvic, our relationship has gone through all the spaces it seems possible for a relationship to go. We had other mates over the years, but eventually came back home to each other in 2001.

That was July, 1974, fifty years ago. In July of 2009 we had a date night in memory of that meeting and I proposed. I know, a bit slow, but fortunately she didn't hold it against me. Now in 2024 we are celebrating our fifteenth wedding anniversary and you get to celebrate this 15-50 with us. - Somewhat. First you get a literature lesson.

Way down at the bottom is my poem for her. I love the sonnet and my favourite form is the English or Shakespearean sonnet – nice crisp 14 lines of iambic pentameter ending in that punch of a rhyming couplet. I think it was a student – not one of mine – who asked if that long poetry line in the text was called an iambic kilometre. You can probably dust off your few remaining synapses to recall iambic pentameter as a line that goes: dah-DUM, dah-DUM, dah-DUM, dah-DUM, dah-DUM. It can get really boring from the pen of anyone not from the time of Shakespeare, but here's the title poem from that first little book I wrote for her. 

Ice Wine

I thought it wouldn't be an easy go

To realign ourselves three decades late

With habits hardened to resist the flow

Of others we'd no more accommodate.

It seems unseemly these our "golden years"

To spend in happy self-indulgency,

Whatever debt we claim as our arrears,

Whatever prospects we can yet foresee.

So much for conscience, generations past.

So much for posture and propriety.

Come tap our vintage cask - the best at last -

Drink passion deep. Enjoy immoderately

  This harvest hoarded through the years of strife,

  This frost-formed sweetness from the vines of life.

This last one for m'lady is an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet with the same 14 iambic pentameter lines but a different rhyme scheme and I chose it for its age in pre-dating the English form and better harmonizing with my advancing whatever. I also wanted to alter the iambs to a more modern natural speech rhythm, but I failed, and the final sestet (teacher-talk for "last bit") reverts to the old ballad bounce.

So, here it is. You could send Beverly a congratulatory note if you wish, at her very own email address: beverlybrookman5@gmail.com as she doesn't do facebook.  And keep it congratulatory; someone (of you, probably) told me they were looking for a sympathy card for our wedding.  Here's to fifty (hopefully 15 at least) more.

A Sonnet for Our Season  Aug. 22/24

There is an opening in late August

when summer stands apart in thoughtfulness,

before exuberant garden plots express

their promises to years to come, in trust

that autumn, gentling adolescent lust, 

will brim husks with eternity's caress

as seed for rip'ning mem'ries to express,

a flow'ring for the year's end to entrust. 

So we enjoy the garden of our lives, 

inhale to bursting, summer fragrances,

delight with friends old tales retold of growth.

Of indiscretions past, our love derives

September comfort from those instances

to harvest memories, present pleasures, both.