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In the opening plays of love and Scrabble, the first player
combines two or more of his or her letters to form a word….
The second player adds one or more letters to those
to form new words, and then, each in turn,
touch other letters and each others lives
But sometimes in Scrabble, and in love, you play a blank!
That blank can be DECLARED as any letter you want it to be…
You choose it
And it remains that letter, that love, for the rest of the game
So I must praise: Scrabble!
Strategy, combination, touch, rows, blank tiles, choosing
declaring, conjugations and puns… that never end
You came out of nowhere, out of CNN NASCAR cyberspace
And when we met you beat me at Scrabble THREE TIMES
You won my heart through scrabble
And you, you won my heart through flame!
You drove with me across the vast plain
to Phillipsburg, Kansas where, in memory of Bud Broun,
We gathered and you cooked penne pasta for my family,
Helping us heal with humor, warmth and vodka
Mother and Aunty jumped at the flames
Father, you, and I laughed in delight
Laughing as the flame warms us, feeds us
The flame to which we told the story of the Brouns
and Gibsons and Sandhaus’s
To which our children will tell our stories, create new stories
So here I must praise Scrabble! Flame!
Praise The Horseshoe Bar and Grill-- the cabin, the fish, the creek!
And look! Darling, there are horses, wild horses galloping!
Let’s tame them and ride them
Let’s take the ultimate ride
Remember, the New York Marathon was nothing for us
After all, one of us left Diddy in the dust
We gallop though the red rocks of Utah, the open plains of Kansas
Can you stay on, hold oh, through the Rocky mountains, run past the elk,
Detour through the fields of Ireland, kiss the Blarney Stone, scatter sheep,
Back across the ocean, across Broadway, into Central Park,
where you proposed at the Ramble
And here we free the carriage horses
and they gallop with us, never again to be shackled
Galloping over vents and subways
Rendering the street performers silent at our stampede,
Galloping through the halls of Goldman Sachs, Time Inc., through the Blogosphere!
Will your horse catch up with mine?
If you fall behind, I will wait for you and we can rest, then continue on --
A stampede of stories, of days and nights spent together,
Galloping now over red earth, into Atlanta
Towards our home, our porch
Towards the glider you bought me
Towards our menagerie
We dismount our horses, so they can graze
And we set them free in the plains of memory and the future
And on the shelf is Scrabble
But before we take the labyrinth journey though words
Before we set letter upon letter
Before I beat you and you beat me
Before we win each others’ hearts all over again
Before we fan the flame,
Before we surround ourselves with our all of our animals,
Let’s huddle close
There’s no rush really
And you can lean into me with all of your trust
And you, you can lean into me with all of your dreams
Hello, husband
Hello, wife.
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