Lovely Mistake Poem by gershon hepner

Marriage, often a mistake,
can be a lovely one.
In marriage you can have your cake
and it eat––oh what fun! ––
although it isn’t perfect––what
on earth is that? It can
be lovely though it may be not
precisely what a married
man or woman would describe
as peachy. It is carried
like remainders after you
divide, but better not divided.
Mistakes, though multiplied,
in marriage should not be derided,
and always should be eyed
as much part of the territory
as what in Eden’s Garden stood,
the famous Error Tree
without which Eve and Adam could
not have lived lovingly.

Inspired by what Michael Tilson Thomas, in a concet program called “The Thomashefskys” says his grandmother, Bessie Thomashefsky, once told him about her marriage with her husband Boris, whom she left when he established a liaison with a beautiful Romanian Jewess called Mrs. Zuckerberg who, he told Bessie, reminded him of her when she was young girl. Bessie married Boris when she was less than sixteen and was undeterred by his multiple liaisons with his many fans until Mrs. Zuckerberg came along. But even though she left him and even competed with him on different stages she told her grandson: “Our marriage was a beautiful mistake.” Bessie was at Boris’s bedside when he died.

12/21/08