Sunday, April 5, 2009

Wedding Poem for the Wedding Season

Well, I guess the wedding season is off and running. Friends and foes of mine all over the country are tying the knot. I went to a wedding last night here in Tucson and I have 2 more in the next 3 weeks to hit; one in Portland and the other in Carmel. Then another wedding in Tucson before my little brother gets married in North Carolina in June! Whew. I better get my dance moves tuned up!

Luckily, I like weddings.

Food, folks and fun- just like McDonald's used to say! ha. But besides seeing old friends, the music, the food and (hopefully) free alcohol, it's of course the bride and groom that really matter. I like hearing the stories involved. The really good ones have a healthy mixture of humor, heartache, cheesy love and redemption. I like seeing the families and all their beautifully awkward attempts at trying to bring two people together. And of course bearing witness to those classic moments: seeing the groom's face when the bride walks in, the exchanging of vows, the triumphant walk out...

So whether you're a cynic or a romantic,
single or married,
or wishing your were on the other side of the fence,
here's a poem that'll give you some food for thought this wedding season:

Wedding Poem
For Schele and Phil

by Bill Holm

A marriage is risky business these days
Says some old and prudent voice inside.
We don't need twenty children anymore
To keep the family line alive,
Or gather up the hay before the rain.
No law demands respectability.
Love can arrive without certificate or cash.
History and experience both make clear
That men and women do not hear
The music of the world in the same key,
Rather rolling dissonances doomed to clash.

So what is left to justify a marriage?
Maybe only the hunch that half the world
Will ever be present in any room
With just a single pair of eyes to see it.
Whatever is invisible to one
Is to the other an enormous golden lion
Calm and sleeping in the easy chair.
After many years, if things go right
Both lion and emptiness are always there;
The one never true without the other.

But the dark secret of the ones long married,
A pleasure never mentioned to the young,
Is the sweet heat made from two bodies in a bed
Curled together on a winter night,
The smell of the other always in the quilt,
The hand set quietly on the other's flank
That carries news from another world
Light-years away from the one inside
That you always thought you inhabited alone.
The heat in that hand could melt a stone.


(thanks to Crystal at Poetry Mix Tape for the tip on this poem)

2 comments:

Jessica said...

love the post...thanks for an afternoon treat.

Laelia Watt said...

Way to include poetry in your "good" things!! I love the image of the lion in the easy chair. :)