A Grand Photo of Matrimony

If anyone believes
that marriage means
forever drinking champagne by sunset
then think again 
It's many things
It can be licking the sugar
off the tip of your spouse’s nose
red roses every friday at five pm
but it can also be
stinking ugly and cold  
it can be hurricane winds of misunderstanding
one-hundred miles an hour winds
scraping up the tiles on your once happy roof
lashing them on ground broken and un-fixable
ice cold freezing temperatures 
that can freeze in just seconds
the twenty-foot oak tree
once planted by you both
in the marital garden
in the middle of a special and very colorful spring
the sunset, if sets in all its glory
could also fall to the dawn of the new age
of tumbling tears from heaven
or flakes of snow
covered in ketchup, blood red
and a frostbitten toe.