Don's Sonnet to Connie for Mother's day

       Thou were you at first and only that to me,
       Your person, self, and life were one and all.
       Then wed we were and double joined to see
       If two could make one life, without a fall.

       That life has grown and mingled our true love
       And fashioned for us labor, joy, and smile,
       And made a marriage of earth and heav’n above:
       Husband, wife, and lovers all the while.

       Till double yoked we double child produced
       Of either sex in perpetuity;
       This two, now one, not halved, nor yet reduced
       But blissed and arched a rainbow progeny.

       Though children, husband, make thee Wife and Mother,
       No less, no more to me than wast, nor other.

       At the time I wrote this decades ago, I was asking my college students to memorize and perform a Shakespeare sonnet "by heart."  With this I think I was challenging my own understanding of the form by composing one.