Wedding Poem Poem by Matt Mullins

Forget if you will the flowers
and gowns and suits of music;
forget the priest or rabbi
or judge and see only these
two coupled now before All, coupled
before the golden door
of their own future.

Look at them. Happy fools.
Beautifully ringed souls wearing a shock
more exact than their own skins, grins
Cheshireing up around their ears. It's obvious
they've come here to prove something.

So here we are, the Invited,
looking upon their proof, this bride and groom
and room full of well-wishers more than ready
to fling hopeful bullets of rice for the truth
of love's humanity. Relatives, friends,
human and flawed as we all are, we're with
those two up there at love's altar
though the truth of living
can make us a tough crowd to satisfy.

But this bride and groom, they're still willing
to take us on, willing to take on Time.
Willing to stand up and swear
that love is the first four letter word,
the deepest need that can do nothing
but awaken their separate bodies and minds
into the idea that two lives can be one
as much as two can be.

After Ceremony, at the party
or on the way there, but after we've seen
these two blessed and kissed and gliding past us
on scented carpets of air, we'll philosophize
simply: 'Wasn't that beautiful? '
'Isn't she beautiful? '
'Isn't he handsome? '
And of course we mean every word,
we always do; but champagned as we are
at seeing Ephemeral Life tricked out of fact
yet again, we still have no idea
what we're saying.

What we really mean to say is thank you
Bride and Groom for proving love's defense
against a life where so much can pass us by unrealized.
What we mean to say is thank you
for re-making the world's first miracle:
the birth of each watery, singular cell
into something far more complicated
and intoxicating.

Tonight these two must hear all this again
and again in different words, but what each
congratulation truly says, truly means and wants
is to take away the tux and gown
and lead them both slowly down an even path
with the wind at their backs then through
another golden door and into bed thirty years
from now, dreaming spooned inside their past,
arms flung around each other, breath as one.

Better yet, it wants to set them face to face,
a nose's inch apart, their eyes still pouring life
into each other, their bodies brushing to the touch
of a wind-turned branch against the bedroom window.
Thirty years married, and children sleeping
in the other rooms or no, all the beauty
and sadness of their years together rests along
the dark line of their bodies pressed together toward
that night which is proof enough of love
and what we're here for.