Extreme Sports

I swore I'd never fall in love with someone
on the far right or without a fashion sense,
a guy who wore his pants too short--
you know, high waters, puddle jumpers, floods.
I can't explain a decade of my life, when all my "musts"
went down the drain, dismantled by tsunami.

Why? He was a charmer who cajoled his way
into my very-ordered-life by flaunting rules,
a former mercenary who turned everything to fun,
and my designer suits cat-walked away,
no place to use them in a SCUBA dive, a glider plane,
white water rafting, or a trek in Cozumel.

When I cooked Kung Pao Chicken, did he savor?
No. He poured on hot sauce without tasting first,
sweat pouring down into his mustache.
"Now that's HOT," he cried. On car trips
he would zoom onto the freeway ramp
(before I'd buckled in), careening.

He tried everything and never finished anything
except when making love, which was about the thrill.
The first night he moved in, we stayed awake till 2:00,
popped popcorn, watched Night of the Living Dead.
He'd never read a poem or heard an opera,
his short, strong, muscled build was far from my ideal.

Why did I marry him? He made me laugh.
He was my bodyguard. I liked the way he smelled.
I should have known disaster loomed--
his favorite song was Willie Nelson's
"On the Road Again" and less than two years
later he was on the road, again.