The Wedding Poem
This day
Let no one claim
That love is false. Let no one
Tell a tale of love's dilution,
Cross his lips with doubt,
Or discuss the up and down and up
Of love chained to a balance beam –
Laundry and who takes out the trash.
Instead, let us make a pact:
To stop for this short time
The radio in our heads, the voices
Of discontent that drive us mad –
The committee of shoulds and oughts
And might have beens. The old harangue
Of never never never.
To forsake, for these next minutes
(Not for this couple but for ourselves),
All the symptoms of our days.
Then, together, let us swear,
That this sun, this sky, these vows,
This bubble balanced on the point
of a knife is all there is –
For we have pushed aside the walls
That close us in
To come to this shared space. And see –
We have filled the space with flowers,
Where love, like some bright bird
Too swift to hold,
May light for us a while and sing.
by Alice Friman
from Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge
Poetworks / Grayson Books, 2003