Forty-Two Years

A friend of a friend has a husband who left; He quit after forty-two years. His wife is a wreck – she’s distraught and bereft And is drowning in buckets of tears. To make it all worse, she has problems with health So will struggle to be on her own, As fate, like a robber with devious stealth, Has made off with the life she has known. A marriage needs partners where both are content Or resentment will bubble below, But forty-two years surely must represent Times with harmony’s ebb and its flow. No matter what changed, it is always so sad When a union like that comes apart; For someone is losing the life that she had, While she nurses a pulverized heart.