Image Courtesy StartMarriageRight.com

Love's Cost

Love is a many splendored thing,

but its cost can go cha-ching!

Innocent love is really so sweet,

but early pregnancy is no treat.

Aborting a baby or marrying wild,

turns a life upside down for a child.

Inhibitions work well until stimulants found,

can turn romance into nightmare come 'round.

Cost of romantic addiction is hard to fathom,

some lives lost altogether in that chasm.

But everything's perfect and the time has come,

we both have income and our time's to be one.

We'll splurge on the ceremony, reception and dance,

fly off on our honeymoon to the south of France.

Children we want plenty to raise as our own,

babysitting, preschool, private school, and a big home.

Financially strapped we argue and fuss,

a costly divorce creates a poor house for us.

Meeting kid's needs through college a boost,

only to find them coming home jobless to roost.

We worked way too long, with romance gone,

those retirement dreams just a poet's song.

Two sick and too weak, we linger, cheek to cheek,

but death stalks and the cost is not for the weak.

Widows left not knowing of her husband's finances.

Widowers left without someone's household graces.

Love touted as the cure to many of our ills,

always seems to ignore who pays the bills.

Copyright 2022 © Ronald W. Hull

9/1/22

You can read and print this poem at my website here.