Ode to My Beloved Longtime Companion (for Cat)
Part IV: Wife and Mother in the Time of the Counterculture

Back home in the States, Cat stayed busy working
and she stayed in touch with his family;
both counting the days until the day
she picked him up at the airport in the yellow VW

During a brief illness, he took care of her,
bringing her meals and sending her flowers;
and then both knew it was time to be together forever
and a small wedding was planned for November

Life together was good in her shoebox duplex
and despite neither knowing how to cook, they thrived
in the intimate ways of lovers learning one another
and their life together as newlyweds was bliss

It was 1971 and the youth rebellion and its’
counterculture of hippies was fueled by
government war lies, corruption, corporate greed;
the young couple living its’ ideals of peace and love

Cat’s job supported them and he returned to college
to complete his bachelor’s degree and volunteered
at the local alternative Rap House serving the cities
countercultural youth with a beehive of activities 

Four years later, exciting news arrived,
Cat was pregnant with a baby boy due in November
however the baby suddenly arrived on a chaotic,
hot day in mid-August to the surprise of all

A tiny two and a half pound, two and a half months early
premie baby boy developed holes in his lungs
and jaundice in his blood, covered in tubes pumping
oxygen and a total blood exchange saving his precious life

Two months in the hospital, most in an incubator,
they finally held him in their arms and took him home
where we carried him on a pillow so as not to bruise
or drop him, this four and a half pound miracle child

Cat a wife and mother now, she settled into
this making of her family, taking extended
family leave to bond with her son and care for him,
their family life together was sweet 

–Herb Stone, here&now working poetry, October 2019

Photos by Herb Stone