Ceremony & Song
A very beautiful, very dear friend of mine asked me to read a poem at her wedding–a poem of my own. She is an enormously special person to me. We have been present for one another in times of excruciating grief and joy. She is someone who I believe, having known her since she was a teenager, deserves every single good thing that she gets–and beyond that, she’s literally one of the smartest human beings I know. Her husband is no dummy either (not that I would have written a lazy poem for less intelligent people, but you know what I mean). So this shit is complicated, right? To read a poem at a wedding, that the bride and groom have not chosen (or heard before), and that you yourself have written (when most of what you write is about war/infanticide/grief/death) is a daunting task. So she asked and I thought about it and them for a few weeks. I had the first line right away. But then what? And then the week before the wedding I woke up at 4 am with the thing more or less figured out and wrote it in three active hours with many cups of coffee. Then I got the green light from my homegirl Maggie (I’m so challenged by love poems you guys).
Sometimes, when I can’t sleep (which is rare, because I’m usually exhausted at bedtime), I recite “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” to myself. This is not something a lot of people know about me (well it was). That is maybe the first poem I ever recited to an audience, and it was one of my mother’s favorite poems, and I find it very comforting to say to myself, and to remind myself that however overwhelmed I am, it’s not time to stop, there’s much to do. I can rest, but then I’ll keep going. For a few months I’ve been playing with the idea of writing something in this scheme, and have written a quatrain here and there, but the content hasn’t been right.
But for a love poem for a ceremony? Perfect. Some order. Some chaos. Some expectation and disruption.
The poem is made up of 4 quatrains (4 line stanzas) of 8 syllables each, with aaba, bbcb, ccdc, dddd (with that repetition at the end).
Here’s my boy Robby F*:
For C&K
It wasn’t that I didn’t know
against bright blue sky or grey sorrow
how to lift myself on feathered wings
gather my strength, get up & go
It wasn’t that you couldn’t sing
the grace of love to dark morning
with faith in promises & plans,
you’ve rocked the child & worn the ring
It isn’t that I’d never danced
or given happiness a chance
felt love denied & love returned
withered under a single glance
It wasn’t that we’d never learned
to make do with less than we deserved
you have folded to another’s need
I’ve lit a match and my self burned
oh yes, my love, we’ve planted seed
have broken bones, know how to bleed
stayed with grief abandoned pleasure
& we know nothing’s guaranteed
You’re no mirror, now or ever
I am able, come whatever
You’ve cut fear, I’ve conquered winter
stunning apart, but stronger tethered
So we offer not surrender
but something steady, something tender
two strong hands & space to wander
two strong minds & space to wonder
