Sometime back my brother Robert wrote a poem to commemorate the night my parents eloped...he read it at mom's funeral and it was so perfect. I love it.
Grandpa carried the bags that night
When Mother proved her courage…
After midnight on January 8th, but nobody knew till May.
Well, the justice knew
And Dad was there (of course),
And their were the make-shift witnesses-
He in a dirty beater and her in curlers.
Not like the movies- not like the pictures I saw in youth.
Not very romantic really…
40 years of marriage, 7 children, and a dozen grandkids ahead…
But who’d of guessed?
Not Grandma, who stormed out crying when she was told.
Not the Justice, returning from a party to a sloppily-written-note on his door.
I can’t think my folks didn’t wonder either,
If the bowling alley with the missing ‘W’ wasn’t an inauspicious start.
But they filled the time and bowled their frames,
Maybe she had a Singapore Sling and he a Rum & Coke
Yes, they were in love
Maybe they didn’t know what love was.
Then they went back to the house in Harmony Village
The justice found those sleepy neighbors
And something was started
That still endures today.
My mother, the Dairy Princess,
The horse tamer
The girl who won the State Championship game with a grand slam blast
Had done it her own way once again.
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