Two Weddings

Two weddings this week
neither is mine
would I know how to feel?
beloved, just there
flowers haloing
the only souls who've known us
haloing
would I know how to stand
how to smile like day break


two weddings this week
neither is ours
she asks-
do butterflies have people in their bellies?
They must
where else do all the timid folk fit?




no one will know who I was when I let go
if asked whether and where have I lived
I will answer, affirmative-
fields of purple-gold iridescence
an echo of her hand in mine
waving white flags from garrisons
smiling and marching like heartache
glad to have had the space to say


here is my right now
& all I have to offer
I can't say what it will become
once it is yours,
but here is my right now
& all I have to offer.

Our Wedding Day

On the day I marry you,
I will wake up as I have the days before
as I will the days after
I will want to polish myself clean
so you might see me as the pebbled offering
I am
I will look back at myself in photographs
marvel at the strange formalities
try to recall what I was feeling and remember
in the span of a day,
not much will change.
When you don't know I'm looking,
I will watch the way your lips ride words
When I don't know I'm listening,
I will sigh the syllables which combine our names
I won't need to make a toast or vow,
you already know all the things I cannot say
The most precious things in my life
are only between you and I
The day after our wedding,
I will wake up exactly the same
but I will have done
the impossible
the invisible
the indelible
But then, we already have.

Soon, the mind goes

these crisp green leaves will curl
synapses more tangles than avenues
as the many layers close in to survive
the infantry will kneel; yellowed, red
never to be what they aren't.
temporary, as
starbursts born so gentle in their morning
reaching for the borrowed sky
only to sacrifice each breath
for the branch below
some say you are nothing but rungs for rings
never appreciated until counted
taxed and compared
I say you are the bender that doesn't break
the wind's rush and coo;
the symphony in the forest
guides your pace
the courage in the fall
reminding you to move
while you can.

some time during the night

it's still a little blurry, but I remember
some time, during the night
while the full moon waned warmth
our hands reached for each other
I do not know whose hand moved first
even in the midnight,
when our minds are lost
in fairy tales and ghost stories
our fingers
on instinct
know home

you said you dreamed of seeing me from a distance

that I appeared happy

it was your way of saying you were letting me go

it was my way of hearing you had given up

you can't blame everything on a dream