Poetry: From the July/August 2007 issue | See all poetry
Wedding Poem (Epithalamium)
Like the hair she has waited all day to let down,
a shadow unfurls from the Ponderosa’s trunk: a plank
one might walk to horizon’s edge, the dark band
just stops.
And out there,
a fractured school of minnows
veering all at once, swifts belly-up and disappear
in dune grass.
Like doubloons, gills, like rusted keys,
or the first glimpse of shore, comparisons
fail: She’s a splinter in the general noon;
a stalled grain on which he stands, he is in no way
sure.
And still the branches sway like a chorus
of believers: arms urging the moored ship off,
years-later waves washing them into the salt
of what was there.
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