Ode To Trieva Maud

Leonie Infantry

Unasked, unbidden, with will of steel,

To the lectern you’d boldly stride, 

Recite you would – and recite you surely did! 

There’d be no stopping, the tapping finger signaled GO! 

No significant occasion was complete, or so you thought, 

without your rhymed, delivered Toast - 

Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, 

I rise to propose a toast on this auspicious occasion; 

The toast that I propose is for the bride and groom 

That you may have a happy life . . . 

A man without a wife is like a kitchen without a knife! 

With the poet, in child-like wonder you’d rejoin, 

Who made the sky so high, 

Painted the rainbow in the sky, 

And taught wee birdies how to fly? 

Were you here with us today, we’d virtually Toast your 96th, 

And see your smiling face, awed by the decade of longing days - 

Now anxious COVID nights - since our tomorrows started here without you. 

“That would be attractive . . . stay as sweet as you are”, we hear you say. 

Rest on, Beloved - Miss Maud, Mama, Trieva, Aunt, Grandma - 

Your name’s forever written on “DanDans’” hearts, 

It’s there you lovingly abide.