Today is my little sister’s wedding. Back in January when she and her boyfriend announced their engagement they asked if I would read a poem at their ceremony. Actually, she asked how I felt about e. e. cummings and I said, no, no no, everyone does that, I’ll find you something.
So I set to work researching the epithalamium, which derives from Greek to translate to “at the bridal chamber.” In basic terms, a wedding song “in praise of the bride and groom, sung at the door to the nuptial chamber on the wedding night.” The form was an invention of the ancient Greek world, the first literary example of which came from the poet Sappho; it then evolved throughout Western history with noted contributions from Catullus, John Donne, Edmund Spenser and into the Modern era with, yes, poets like e. e. cummings. But none of them spoke to me, none of them captured the essence of my sister Jess and her man Ben. So I wrote my own.
I’ll be reading this today at her ceremony:
EPITHALAMIUM
I will invoke no muse, no god, no law
but the law set down by the heart’s first brush:
a beige stroke to make a hemp necklace, straw
line to flatten the Texan accent, wash
of light blue to mark the New Hampshire sky.
It was there, out in the Mustang with no
plan or aim that the snow became both pied
backdrop and necessary frame to show
you how light can unravel, a ribbon
set free as you rounded the frozen shores
of Lake Winnepesaukee. A carbon
copy part sun, part ice, in the outdoors
beyond those car doors you found a new view:
truth not in place of beauty but the two
there commingled like the exhaled breath, cloud,
puff, fog, water vapor condensed, a vow.
But come, flip the scene now: Boston’s lights streak
the window of the 57 bus
the rivulets of snow melt like a chic
jewel or a ring’s ripples on the Charles. Dust
the evening with childlike laughter, with blue
that is sometimes light, the sky at its edge,
sometimes saturated, a deeper hue,
an October noon when the sun’s new wedge
paints the grass gold and the chill breeze snatches
reds and oranges off the trees and plasters
them to the ceiling where Sargent’s patches
keep watch over the MFA masters,
over you on that first walk round Walden
Pond. When the coffee pot gurgles, hold on
to the mahogany table, its slick
stack of musty books, a lit candle stick,
and as it burns remember on this day
you are no Eve pulled from Adam and two
do not become one. You come complete, two
ones come together, separate lights made
stronger in your combined light, not snuffed out
in the light of the third, but two that burn
beside each other, beside the lit third
no doubt made possible by those three words
I. Love. You. And by your pledge of I do.