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No Party
copyright © 1998 by H. Paul Shuch, Ph.D.

My mother and her husband gave no party
To celebrate their forty years of marriage.
For it was just another rite of passage,
Like mortgage payments, treated with indifference.
I called to offer my congratulations
And found my mother sitting by the TV,
The sound turned down to keep it from distracting
Her husband, who was buried in his paper,
The two together, their eyes never meeting.
If they had sparkle once, I never noticed.
Half their lifetimes they have spent together
Glued to their TV, and to their papers.
If you asked, they'd each profess devotion,
But no one is asking, so why bother?
Perhaps they reasoned that July eleventh
Would come and go, as all these forty years had.
Celebrations are just too much bother,
So, no party. I can only wonder
What force held the two of them together,
Buoying them through forty years of marriage.
Could it have been love, or just inertia?

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