This is an amusing marriage poem which I wrote a long time
before I got married.
It's called "The Thing to Be Done."
The thing to be done is not to be done quickly.
You must wait patiently hiding in the pillow
like an adolescent or later in bed with a friend's wife
who doesn't love you yet.
You will get out soon, the prison chaplain promised,
but you banged on your plate like a child.
You must wait until the thing itself lunges at you
from memories of first dates.
In the right honest film, she always
smiled a girl's believed everything.
You've waited a long time and grinned at the pain.
When the real thing enters, the preacher shakes his bell,
the girl sighs.
Her father beats a drum, her mother
cries suspecting pregnancy.
But you know better, shouting across the green lawns
of solicitude, I do, then your wife comes in.