Carved In Stone Poem by Francie Lynch

To me, this sounded so final and trite,
But his wife, she said, left him,
Cause she couldn't be a wife.

There's a fine epitaph to carve,
On the stone above his life:

My wife, they say, left me,
Cause she couldn't be a wife;
That's all she ever wanted,
To be this dead man's wife.

A couple passing by the script,
Might read an enigmatic drift.

What kind of wife, the woman asked,
I wonder what he meant by that.

One who'd drink and drink some more,
Smoke and eat and grow so fat
On bacon rinds and Caesar's Salad.

Could she nurse through any sickness;
See it for what it is;
For what it was;
See the outcome,
Not the cause.

And yet, it's true, all along,
He wasn't in control.
Not abuse, or dementia,
But a disease involving anyhol.

What would his wife do
To put up the fight
During his life-threatening plight.

Was the promise not made
For good health or illness;
Does she get to choose the sickness?
What kind of wife gets that option?

I know he didn't give objection,
As many husbands do,
When she raised ablutions
To her false gods,
That promised on the temple pinnacle
That all is theirs, if she submits,
To the pyramids that promise riches.

Till death do us part.

Now that's a lark in a song of lament.
She could have been any wife
She'd deem to choose in this life;
She chose,
For a limited time,
On a definition
He declined.