My Wedding Poem

Some poems are written to be seen. There are other poems you write and they’re more like journal entries, in that, there’s something we really want to express; however, they’re meant for you to daydream through writing. When I started this project, I wanted to give everything a chance. I go through the poems written in hopes of finding their audience and the shy ones that probably would prefer to never see the light of day. I came across this poem a few weeks ago. It definitely was in the ‘never see the light of day category.’ There was this part of me that always dreamed of being a groom and having a wedding. I am fairly introverted, but I definitely dreamed of having this moment where I stare at my new wife in a wedding car and feeling so happy and proud to be able to call someone so spectacular my wife. This poem was written after I met the woman I did marry. I had no idea she would not want a wedding and I would agree to getting married at the DMV. I had no idea we would become each other’s ex-husband and ex-wife. It’s almost like the picture I chose to go with it. I chose in the picture not to show the bride yet because the poem is really the groom imagining that moment. It seems strange to choose to post it, but when I read it, it read like an old picture. I found the poem and read it and remembered how I used to picture my wedding day. Despite how it never came into fruition and the marriage failed, I found a strange happiness in reading it and knowing I wrote it and never shared it with anyone. If we could take pictures of our dreams, I guess this is what one of mine would look like. Even reading it now, I think of young grooms out there and hope there’s a part of them that gets to feel I the things I longed for in this poem.

The Marriage Car

Laying in wet nasurtium of leaves, I dream,
A wedding car driving down a county’s
One paved road. Dust raises behind the vehicle.
I hold in my clenched fist, the wrapper of something
I ate but did not share. I think like a flame sometimes
After it fades from blue. My thought too
Go somewhere. I’m not really sure where?
I think like mountain water
They find a place too cold to drink
In such an early spring of thought.
In composition books tucked in drawers
Is a big life with mysterious errands
And the intoxicating smell of rain.
You have rolled the window down….
Now, I feel everything has the chance to touch us-
Wind and mockingbird,
Sounds and aureate songs.
It feels like the afternoon Kate passed,
Everything wanted to touch my skin.
The unreal feeling of humanness
Even on that day, I allowed myself to feel.
This is the same. Except,
It’s all lurching at me all the more,
Clematis vines gripping over a fence,
Popping color back into the ghost of life.
I only look at you sitting next to me
Dressed in virgin white, your smile, your sadness,
Your full petal pink lips patrimony of life.
Your hair is perfectly placed wildly.
Your body comes to light so undeniably. Light
Between dead branches, light that grows flowery weeds
In the smallest cracks of land, light that pushes
Through the clouds and warms all that is inside me.
You are a dawn that holds both the moon and sun
In your blue sky. We are young, existing in someone’s
Daily wishful journal entry, in someone’s prayer.
Only in film clips. Only in stanzas.
When I look at you at this moment,
I want to whisper it all into your being-
The whole thing-
The story we have yet to grow and come to know…