"Seussical Style" Poem (missing)

Let's just say right up front that I know that the 911 system really works. Works sometimes all too well.

The weekend before Veteran's Day a few years back I had my friend Don come up to visit. Don and I have been pals since junior high school, and if Catholic school, the US Navy and a long distance separation couldn't crush our friendship, nothing could. He came up with the understanding that he was going to "uplift" his buddies spirits. I think his wife was happy to get him out of the house for the weekend. I was happy to have him.

We didn't waste a minute of time. We hiked locally, drank widely, shopped regionally and otherwise worked on everything that constituted constructive buddy building. We checked out Jarhead, we crashed and burned through local pubs, nursed hangovers and even picked up movies to watch at the local pawn shop. It was a grand weekend. He taught me how to put chains on the car, I taught him all I knew about mosses and lichens and liverworts. Nevermind my loving teacher got it backwards on those lichens and liverworts. My pal Don was never the wiser and went home raving about all he did and saw and learned in the great Pacific Northwest.

You and I were in deep communication that weekend, my love, if I remember correctly. The rainy Saturday that I took Don up into Green Mountain you sent to me a loving poem, somewhat based on the Seussical Style musical that was going around. I didn't know that at the time, hell, took me awhile to figure out that angle, but I loved the poem and set it aside. Went back later and printed it out, set it on my nightstand. At some point it went inside a book and that was that.
Race ahead ten months. We had already crashed and burned and the family was back in the house. That printout was resting somewhere, resting like a timebomb or an antipersonnel mine among my books upstairs next to my bed. All I can say is "Oops." Yeah, what a big "oops" it was.
I was tasked with watching the kids one afternoon in July. It was a Monday, an off day. I was living in the Little House and was going back and forth and discovered my youngest on the phone. I hung up the phone and then, right away, it rang again. I hung it up once more, thinking it was yet another solicitation phone call and unplugged the phone. What came next was the price of admission for loving you, darlin'.

I wasn't living in the front house so wasn't in charge of cleaning the front house. But let me tell you it was a mess. What, a month into the family being back and it was trashed. So here I was, chasing around the youngest with a dirty diaper and the front door bell rings. Holy hell, who was there but the local police, wanting to come in to answer for a hung up 911 call. I didn't place the call, that's for sure, as much as I wanted to for the mess in the house. It was the youngster. I caught him goofing and if I had just answered that second ring everything would have been different. Some things are just meant to be your Waterloo.

So The Man walked the house, not only to cruise the messy bottom floor but the upstairs as well to look for some semblance of a crime. It was July, as I said. Hot. The upstairs was stuffy, messy, the beds unmade, toy strewn about, all of that. They came down satisfied, I walked them to the door embarrassed. I didn't even live there and I felt the burn.

SO my Estranged One came home and I told her about it. A row commenced and I commenced to move my books and such from upstairs bedroom to my little house next door. Lo and Behold, what should pop out at that very moment in time BUT the Seussical Style poem! WOW! Talk about bringing down the wrath of God! The whole evening and the rest of the summer was colored by that poem.

How grand.

Our complete and total Waterloo came only five days later when your email box was left opened and pilfered that Sunday afternoon. Our Coda. Napoleon must have felt about the same at the end of his campaign, too.

I came across that printed email later on in the fall when my Estranged One went back to Las Vegas for a weekend. I copied down what you wrote me in my journal, and then put the note back where I found it. I never saw it again. The journal was destroyed later on, two years later on, matter of fact. It was filled with very terse and seriously heavy stuff that I wrote in the dead of night after we wrecked our craft that summer. It felt good to put that journal to the torch, but I'm sorry I didn't have sense to salvage that poem before I burned it. Pity.

So, there M, see what your words have done over here? Nothing like the impact our words made when they were discovered on your end, but all the same. My little bit of heat for the sake of our love. But, hey, I'll bet you never had the cops called to your house because of our letters, hmm?

Love.

Your WHMB