A wedding gift for Chad and Rachel.
Gold
It’s as if after
Seeing only black
And flecks of red
From retinal cells,
A secret world
And quiet,
You opened eyelids,
Saw each other’s
Searching faces;
And as if after
Seeing only one another,
Eyes, and lips, and skin,
Colors crept in
Suddenly,
Formed edges and
Slipped through strands,
Blithely rested
With a shine on heads
Like crowns,
Laid purple shadows soft
In temples and beneath
Your gentle brows,
Made faces in the world
Of faces that were the world,
Gave everything its glory;
And it’s as if after,
As you marked
How necks, miraculous,
Curve up from collarbones
Like violins or horns,
Those colors coalesced,
Lucid, into two green trees
Arched around your heads,
Forming depths in which you stood,
Thick with knit branches and
Stocked with living light
Lilting through the leaves
Like blinking halos set
Around temples,
Your necks, and
Your bright white crowns;
And it’s as if after
This, you saw, amazed,
That the branches matched your hands
Like the halos matched your crowns,
And you stood in a world
Made for you,
Seeing each of you seeing both of you
Seeing one another,
With fingers knit and heads alight and seen;
And the world was for you,
And you were for the world,
And you were in the world,
And the world was there in you;
And it’s as if after
This, you lifted heads, and
Saw the whole raised glen
Encircled
By stone white spires like
Rumbling churches that none could move
With mist fingered through, and you
Stood in a glen above, within a
World, held up and in by heights;
And as if after you
Saw your place above, within,
You saw a sudden bird beside you
Who freed
His one slow note,
And you heard,
As others breathed
And bided,
Tensed to make instruments
Of their bright small bodies too,
Who, when his note ran clean,
Blew their singing free
And flew,
Setting boughs swinging,
And light dancing,
And lungs laughing deep;
And it’s as if after
Low clouds splintered light in spectrums,
The whole procession reached you,
Breached the raised glen, singing,
Weaving in with
Flags between the trees,
And you stood
In a perfect pool of light
In a circle of shadow,
A sphere above
Of mist and light
And below of spires' black cast, and
Into and out of it, a
Hundred herons, cardinals flashed,
Making white and red wings gold,
And deepening grass to blue,
As we sang your holy melody,
Our Eve and Adam again.
Incense
Stubborn, they insisted on dirt,
Your feet, knees also,
Palms, full face.
In heaps built round
With dusty walls
To keep the pry-eyes out,
You sat,
Lay,
Slumped.
Pivoting foreheads on the ground,
You sometimes, yes,
You glanced up, pined.
But you were too heavy. Too down-
Weighed by weight, by
You.
That before the earthquake,
The cataclysm that
Moved continents and you
Together, tentative.
You blew down walls to see
The other, new neighbor, found
That you could reach over,
Each to each's face!
Glance met glance and up
Your faces turned to meet
The other's gaze, amazed.
You moved a hand to touch a
Cheek or lip.
You sat soon,
Found yourself sitting
Up across and eye to eye,
Hunched beneath your coats and chainmail,
Baubles, crusts, and clothes,
Peeping out or sometimes
Up together,
Full of fear, of beauty.
It would not do.
You could not sit like that. You'd
Topple, sure, with all that on. You'd
Flatten flatter in the dirt and blow
Your walls up higher.
Remember, oh, the first
Layer? Laying bare the buttons,
Arms spread wide, for
Another hand to undo,
Spooked?
Remember, oh,
Undoing?
You could sit then, sure, together.
Sit.
But you were not up.
It took, would take much more:
Peeling off each other's
Bodies piles of dirty togs,
Down to the skin.
Bare, you could stand,
Though heel and toe still
Held on tight to dust.
You still, together, pined.
So,
Turning once more toward
Each other, baring tender bellies,
Reaching round to each's back,
Embracing, you
Took off still another layer.
Always another layer.
Found new insides to find
Inside each other. Sought
To get to breaths,
To free to flight
Each other.
We watched you get
To lightness, see
And be seen,
Till,
Under the thunder of
A triple formulation,
You flew.
You found each other's breath,
And lightened breath by breath,
Became one breath
And rose up
On a whisper
And a prayer.
Myrrh
Embalm them both
With honey, milk, and wine.
Dip hands in and slip wrists up
Skin, dripping. Slow.
Slick them smooth for
The earth.
Drink to them both,
And spice the bodies!
They'll be changed
in the wink-
-ing of a lover's eye.
Smile and sigh as you
Lift your bodies,
Wrap-
-ping arms a-
-round.
Lift.
Open the garden!
Bear the bodies in!
Lay them together
And lay them in earth.
Bury the bodies. Bur-
-ied bodies are fertile.
Clap petals and breathe
In the damp of the dirt
And the scent of the rose
Through the heat of your chests
As you dance in the garden
Of two graves.
Breathe.
Now,
Step! to the thrum of a new scented rhythm
Marked by the footfalls of another body's feet!
Beat down the grasses.
Beat down the herbs.
Spice the garden's air
With the fertile garden's spices,
Grown in the garden
Of two graves.
Honey, milk, and wine are in the garden.
Made in the fertilized garden. Made and grown
To be gained in the garden.
Go and find them. Gain them!
Find them.
Go and find them!
Drink them!
Dance!