"I would love you ten years before the flood."
-Andrew Marvell
A long time ago when cataclysms were common
as sneezes and land masses slid
around the globe looking for places
to settle down and become continents,
someone introduced us at a party.
Later on, as the Rennaissance flowered,
I fell in love with you, egged on by the sonnet
and the idea of your individuality.
We married during the Industrial Revolution,
coughing on a brown lawn above a city
humming with flywheels and dry belts.
The ceremony went like clockwork.
When we rattled the world, we shut the blinds
and huddled under a table while sirens harmonized.
Everything but our affection was rationed.
Now we find ourselves in the post-modern age,
using one of its many Saturday nights
to drive to the movies in a Volkswagen.
"It doesn't seem we've been together that long,"
you say, looking at my profile,
contractig the past into the rearview mirror,
beaming the future into the tunneling of our headlights.
-- Billy Collins
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