Expiration dates…a tongue-in-cheek Shakespearian sonnet

As she will be the first to admit, my wife is hyper vigilant about the expiration dates of tasty comestibles. Here is a little sonnet in honor of her “best before” zealotry.

Expiration dates…a tongue-in-cheek Shakespearian sonnet

Portentous dates do haunt my darling wife;

Expiry cutoffs rob her of fine cheese

And so undermine her gustatory life

Against all reason, hectoring, and pleas.

She’ll throw away the most delicious spread

That yesterday she devoured with great gusto

‘Cause “best before” has reared its ugly head;

Why such waste? Such literal-minded fuss? So

Foiling the grace of her beleaguered palette

With unfounded threats of horrors of tomorrow,

Poised to strike her down, an ever-deadly mallet

Foretelling such crushing gastric sorrow.

My “best before” has long since come and gone,

Yet she hasn’t shelved me; she sweetly keeps me on.

https://www.rsc.org.uk/shakespeares-sonnets

https://www.britannica.com/art/iambic-pentameter

Shakespearian sonnet

One stanza of 14 lines
Usually written in iambic pentameter (a line of verse with five metrical feet, each consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable, for example Two households, both alike in dignity.
Structured in three quatrains (each with their own ABAB rhyme schemes) and a final couplet
The final rhyming couplet often sums up or gives a surprising twist