July 29, 2014

two days before her wedding

Two days before her wedding, the poet saw she wasn’t quite prepared
for the onslaught of guests, the descent of celebrants coming as far away as France
to watch her take the crucial steps and raise their glass. It’s not that she was scared
to make the leap or shy of merriment or doubtful of the truth of each circumstance
that brought her, finally, to this monumental Yes. It was this: she knew the search
for words would fall inevitably short - the poem elusive as a ghost. It is hard to steal
the writer from her pen, let the muscle soften and go slack. Hard to clamber off the perch
of certain distance and land, bare-throated, in the center of the ring, emptied of her well.
But love, she knew, would always win, its quiet verses calling her off-stage.
And so the poet left her chair and peeled her heart out of the page.