A humorous free-verse poem about my wife's and my recent shopping trip.

This past Monday morning
I suggested to my loving wife
it would be a great time
for us to run some errands.

True, it was raining at the time.
Raining rather hard, in fact.
“It won’t continue to rain so
hard but will quit soon enough,”
I assured her with complete
confidence in my wisdom.

Somewhat too reluctantly,
I thought, she finally gave in
and off we merrily went.
At our first stop, we opened
the car door and stepped out
into a parking lot filled with
several inches of flowing water.

Our shoes only got a tad wet,
somewhat offset by the small umbrellas
we had failing to keep the hard rain
from soaking our backs and legs.
“It’ll have stopped by the time we
finish our shopping,” I assured.

Wrong! If possible, it was raining
even harder as we returned to the car.
Next we plowed through foot-deep streams
across the roads on the way to our next store,
as my sweet wife glared across the car seat at me.

Fortunately, I had to keep my eyes
staring straight ahead focusing all
my attention on the flooded streets.
I did hear some muttering regarding
“your stupid idea” or something close to that.
The thunder and lightning drowned her out.

Three more stops followed this same pattern,
except the rain got harder and the umbrellas
kept getting smaller. Finally, after grocery shopping,
we headed home with both the groceries
and ourselves soaked. It seems to me that
wet wives are about as happy as are wet hens!

The wife acted as if I should have known
in advance that morning that the hard rain
wouldn’t let up but would continue
its downpour to set a new record rainfall
of over four inches for that date in Shreveport.
Who knew? I remain blameless … and clueless.
From now on, we only set out to run errands
when the sun is brightly shining … new rule.