Four Dozen Years of Grace

At Bible study, one Wednesday evening,
two unknown women join us, together.
Both are exhausted and barely clinging
to wakefulness. It seems to me that they’re
one tiny effort shy of collapse as
they sit, passive, weariness untold.
I am not aware that the mother has
brought her daughter to town, to be enrolled,
that they've spent a long Kansas summer day,
trudging from office, to office; too much!
Now they've got the list done, but for a way,
for some days, to have room and board and such.
I leave for home. They're friends with the pastor.
The dorms are still closed. He offers his care
for a few days, averting disaster.
Mom asks her thoughts of the boy with short hair.

“Mother, I could not stand that know-it-all.
For four years, I've studied theology
in a tough school. He's studied not at all.
He just knows physics and some chemistry.
His Bible education is so small."
"Kathleen, you should not speak thoughts of that brand",
Mom says; "you never know how things will fall.
It may turn out he will be your husband!"
Neither knows that the pastor lives near me,
right across the street, and I admire him,
spending my time there, learning what-all he
can teach. So I ask the girl, on a whim,
"Hey, all of my friends are out of town now;"
[smooth operator] "care to do something?"

[or maybe just inept; she knows not how
to tell the difference]. What will this date bring?

She’s figured it out: not smooth but inept.
I think she must somehow find that pleasing.

Else I cannot explain why she has kept

me around. It can't be she's just teasing.

We've now been married forty-eight years whole.

Betty, the prophet, has gone on to God.

Kathleen inherits the matriarch's role

and I no longer think it quite so odd

when the miraculous infects our joint life:

children come from all corners of the earth;

the wonder that Kathleen remains my wife;

her endless wit and never-ending mirth.

What have I done to attain such a place?

How is it that I have this lady's love?

How can I have merited her embrace?

There’s only one answer: grace from above.

Copyright ©2018, Paul H. Harder II

This poem is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 License.