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"It was spring of 1980"
by
Selden Smith
It was spring of 1980 when we planted
That tree beside the church where we were wed.
We stood before those gathered and we said
We'd give each other all the years we're granted.
It was a honey locust, just a stick.
We sank the root ball in the ground and posed
Before the camera in our wedding clothes,
Just happy kids. It sure as hell grew quick.
We set out on our own to make a life.
Most years had honey and locusts too.
But oh my honey, our love only grew,
And by good luck or fate you're still my wife.
Come stand again beside our wedding tree
And spread your branches to the sky with me.
About the Author
Selden Smith travels the country, persuading alumni of a large state university that their money will do the world more good in the university's coffers than their own bank accounts. He and Eve have been married for 28 years (GK broadcast a "happy anniversary" message on their 25th), and their daughter, Melaura, is an above-average college sophomore. He likes to sing, and although not a professional poet, he is, of course, an English major.
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Bed of Roses Love Sonnet Contest Winner
Finalists
In Garrison Keillor's latest book, Lake Wobegon native Margie Krebsbach dreams up the idea of a trip to Rome, hoping to get her husband Carl to make love to her — he's been sleeping across the hall and she has no idea why. She finds a patriotic purpose for the journey. A Lake Wobegon boy, Gussie Norlander, died in the liberation of Rome, 1944, and his grave, according to his elderly brother, Norbert, is in a neglected weed patch near the Colosseum...
It's a story of Wogegonians in a strange land, telling stories of kinship and self-revelation — all delivered with Keillor's trademark humor.
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From Garrison Keillor:
“When I was 16, Helen Fleischman assigned me to memorize Shakespeare’s Sonnet No. 29, ‘When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state’ for English class, and fifty years later, that poem is still in my head. Algebra got washed away, and geometry and most of biology, but those lines about the redemptive power of love in the face of shame are still here behind my eyeballs, more permanent than my own teeth. The sonnet is a durable good. These 77 of mine include sonnets of praise, some erotic, some lamentations, some street sonnets and a 12-sonnet cycle of months. If anything here offends, I beg your pardon, I come in peace, I depart in gratitude.”
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