We're not the teen-dream lovers of the songs
And films n’ soaps n’ mills n' boons n’ ads,
The 'hunters' living with their mums and dads,
The twenty-something dramas, dinging-dongs,
The sizzling catalogues of straps and thongs,
The Darcys, Juliets and golden lads
In modern strip from tales in which the cads
Are forty odd like us and cause all wrongs.
Our story didn't end like these above
In frozen celebrations, wedding-deaths;
We've raised a daughter into Now and Next,
We're grown ups grown together, more or less,
Our romance is a realistic text:
A dangerous, married, grail-quest of true love.
This was for an anniversary a few years ago. We've clocked up thirty years since and we're fifty somethings in this picture though forty something in the poem. I always visualise the Norwich City kit in line 7 (because of the golden lads). But for fidelity through better and worse, Ashton Gate is more like it. I shared a long Indian train journey with a Sikh once who told me that you don't get married on your wedding day - it takes at least ten years. We're getting there.
