In Loving Tribute

On this Valentine’s Day, here’s a poem about love that endures through difficult times. I posted this last year, but it’s worth a second look.

The following poem was inspired by a song from a movie that was released in the late 1990’s. I never heard of the song or the movie until 2005 after my late husband Bill proposed to me. He was living in Fowler, Colorado, at the time, and I was here in Sheridan, Wyoming. We met through a magazine, and after a long-distance friendship during which we communicated regularly by e-mail and phone and met face to face twice, he sent me a letter, out of the blue, asking me to marry him. This was in January.

A month later, he sent me a Valentine care package that included, among other things, a cassette tape of love songs he downloaded from the Internet. One of these was “I Want to Spend My Lifetime Loving You” from The Mask of Zorro. It became one of our songs. Even now, after caring for him at home for six years when two strokes partially paralyzed him, and after I lost him three years ago, I still marvel that a man wanted to spend his lifetime loving me. To hear this song, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo4AWDELNiY . To hear me read the poem, visit https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15213189/rise%20fal%20of%20zorro.mp3 . Happy Valentine’s Day, honey, wherever you are.

***

THE RISE AND FALL OF MY ZORRO

 

With cape, hat, mask, rapier,

he rode out of the darkness.

“Take my hand. Dance with me,” he said,

“I want to spend my lifetime loving you,”

but happily-ever-after was not to be.

My hero fell and rose many times.

I felt the glory

until he fell for the last time.

Where there’s love, life begins again.

When life dies, love goes on.

***

Author Abbie Johnson Taylor

We Shall Overcome

How to Build a Better Mousetrap: Recollections and Reflections of a Family Caregiver

That’s Life: New and Selected Poems

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