Love Sonnet To My Wife
George Hancock, 1917-1992
Who is this girl?
This woman on the pillow next to
mine;
Who lies to rest beside me?
On the pillow next to mine.
This is she whose life I share
In all the things I do.
The toil that is so wearying
No chores of which are new.
The humdrum work of day goes by-
Its tedium marks the time,
Until the day is ended
And she rests on the pillow next
to mine.
My arms with love reach to her;
Now man is growing bolder.
Her head must leave that pillow
And rest upon my shoulder.
Love of long years triumphs
As increase it does billow.
Sweet, blissful, and eternal love
Comes to me from that pillow.
 |
Jay
Nocera of Niche Cartoons 2012
|
Love
Sonnet to My Wife
George
Hancock, 1917-1992
I
discovered this poem while sorting through my mother’s things after her passing
in 1998. Faded
over time, it is hand-written in perfect penmanship on a fragment of wrinkled
white stationery.
The poem
was buried in one of her bureau drawers amongst the old-style embroidered
hankies and
never-worn kidskin gloves. The original poem is now framed and preserved for
the next generation.
My
parents were private people and never really revealed much about their
relationship to anyone.
My sense is this poem was written many years ago at the mid-point of their
marriage and
lives.
George
and Mary met at a USO dance in early 1942 in Fresno, California, then a small
town in
California’s Great Central Valley. They were married in April of 1942 just
before my dad shipped
out to Burma to serve in the Army Air Corps, Intelligence Unit. My parents did
not see one
another again for more than four years.
My
parent’s third date was the wedding ceremony where they met to exchange vows.
Before this occasion,
conversation was by letter or phone. It still puzzles me how my dad proposed,
but I guess he
found a way.
Years
later when I was nursing, one of my patients turned out to be an old Army buddy
of my dad's. (Life
is one big circle.) When my
parents visited him, my dad’s old chum remarked, ‘…..George and Mary are as
much
in love
as the day they married….they skipped into the room holding hands….’
My father
passed away just two months shy of my parent’s 50th wedding anniversary. In a
sentimental mood, my mother once remarked that dad chose this time so he did
not have to say he
had been married 50 years.
I am
publishing this poem to give tribute not only to my father’s poetic verses, but
to an extraordinary
love shared by two ordinary people during extraordinary times.
May we all know such love
before life’s end.
Shared with permission by
Marcia Hancock, Author of A Daughter's Remembrance
Copyright 2012. All rights reserved.
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