My Mama was a looker graced with smarts,
engaging as a girl can get. By twenty,
she’d won a hand of diamonds ringed with hearts;
but then my Daddy wooed her, he was plenty.
The chances of romance between those two
was what the bookies would have called good odds:
the bombshell led the gambler straight to
the alter, trumping men of lesser gods.
Her summer solstice wedding bells, they tolled
four decades for two ramblers on a tear
that broke up like a Patsy Cline gone gold;
yet I, the first of six, am here to swear
their alchemy of crazy love and laughter
is raising hell to heaven in the hereafter.
—
© MFK Buckley, 2006
In memory of
Melanie Myra Knecht (Buckley) nee Marjorie Florence Harman
March 14, 1931-February 2, 2014