Category Archives: wedding poems

Mystery Bride

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Mystery Bride

As ceremonies go, theirs was most whimsical in nature—
as original in rite as in its nomenclature,
for to the credit of the groom, who set custom aside,
it was he who chose to take the last name of the bride.

Right off, it captured interest the day the knot was tied
when his wife-to-be was clothed with little left to hide.
Swathed in camouflage from her head top to her toes,
you couldn’t see the bride at all. You only saw her clothes.

So since no one had met the bride, when  their “I do’s” were said
without the bridal burqa being lifted from her head,
nobody really knew at all what his Mrs. looked like.
The groom was heard to say it only mattered what she cooked like.

And so the mystery of the bride remains up to this day.
If his family’s seen her, not one of them will say.
And though his treatment of his bride is thought by some as vicious,
all agreed the wedding cake she baked was most delicious.

Prompts today are cinch, ceremony, whimsical, capture and interest.
Photo by Omar Belattar on Unsplash, used with permission.

The Reappearance

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The Reappearance

A luscious former lover that I haven’t seen in years
takes my quiet life by storm when he reappears.
He showers me with flowers he says are in arrears
for all those times he should have stayed to dry my tears.

Of course it’s an unsuitable last-minute love affair
that simply manifested like magic from pure air.
For well nigh on a dozen years, he wasn’t even there—
this Lochinvar who now insists we are the perfect pair.

Dare we try settle accounts so long overdue?
Dare we stir those embers to kindle love anew?
Or might our purple passion have assumed a lighter hue?
At this late date how can I know the proper thing to do?

Why so wan and pale, dear lover? Are you drained by worry?
Why such a push to reconnect? Why such frenetic hurry?
Why suddenly are you intent my favors to thus curry?
Why all this sudden passion? This trial without jury?

Who put me in this role of judge, called to adjudicate
what might be our future–our destiny and fate?
Once I would have loved the task, but now it is too late.
Why would you wait until the eve of my wedding date?

The wedding cake is stacked and iced, the flowers hung in bowers.
The time until my union is measured now in hours.
In a backroom with his friends, my groom paces and cowers.
Bridesmaids fuss and bother and rearrange their flowers.
Now is not the time, my dear, to reassert your powers.

All of us have daydreams of lovers of the past,
intent in our belief that they were not meant to last.
The sea of love, once entered, is so wide and deep and vast
that we lose connection with lines formerly cast.

I see you now sequestered in the far back row
beside the aisle I’ll walk down, my troth to here bestow.
You should have spoken sooner. You should have let me know.
For now it is too late to reverse the status quo.

Your flowers were so lovely that you sent today.
As  in the past, most exquisite—their colors bright and gay.
It would have been a dreadful waste to throw them all away,
so here they are,  tucked into my nuptial bouquet.

 

Prompt words today are suitable, arrears, anew and luscious. Links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/05/02/rdp-thursday-suitable/
https://fivedotoh.com/2019/05/02/fowc-with-fandango-arrears/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/05/02/your-daily-word-prompt-anew-may-2-2019/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2019/05/02/luscious/

Realistic Wedding Vows, Aug 5, 2018

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Photo by Alan Steed

 

Realistic Wedding Vows

I will abide your ego if you will abide mine—
If you ignore my awkward habits, I can exist with thine.
I’ll overlook socks on the floor or an abandoned shoe
if you promise not to mention an extra line or two
you might detect in years to come, scribed onto the place
where I hope you’ll still plant kisses on my aging face.

I won’t make you eat okra if you won’t bring home fish
expecting me to transform them into a tasty dish.
I’ll try to love your mother if you’ll put up with mine.
Poker evenings with your friends that stretch ’til dawn are fine
so long as you won’t rush on through from front door to the fridge
when I have my friends over for a game of bridge.

Stop and talk awhile. Get to know their names.
The sexes aren’t so different. We just play different games.
Our love is a given, so it requires no vow.
The things that I promise thee, in public, here and now
are fidelity and an effort to be the easiest me
that, given what your vows are, it’s possible to be.

Photo by Alan Steed

Hard to believe these photos were taken 31 years ago. Both the generous friend who took them for us as a surprise and the groom are now departed, but not the memories. We actually did not write our vows back then, even though we were both writers. I wonder why? I think it was because I was trying to coordinate publicity for a show being shot in Tahiti, planning a wedding and acting as the go-between for three house closings as we sold each of ours and bought a new house in northern California. The wedding was simple, but wonderful with surprise guests showing up from every stage of my life: childhood, college, Australia, old students from Wyoming, poet friends, friends from work, all my family from three different states, Bob’s kids and friends and even one lady I’d never met who flew in from Wyoming because she thought it sounded like fun. Ha. I’d sent out the invitations as an announcement, but everyone came. Guess they had decided this was never going to happen and they had to see the evidence for themselves. The photos are used as an illustration only and were an afterthought. Bob wasn’t a fisherman. I hadn’t played bridge since college!

The prompts: abide, ego, awkward, detect. Below are the links.

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/05/rdp66-abide/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/05/fowc-with-fandango-ego/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/05/awkward/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/08/05/daily-addictions-2018-week-31/ (Detect)

Beauty and the Beast

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Beauty and the Beast

“You Are Well Come” the banner read,
fluttering high over head.
From tree to tree it had been hung
with vibrant ribbons, securely strung.

Feasting tables were well laid
with mead and beer and lemonade.
The wedding cake stood tall bedecked,
sugar-spun and flower-flecked.

Roast joint of flesh and wheels of cheese
were laid, the wedding guests to please.
The wedding aisle strewn with flowers,
overhead the wedding bowers.

Organ music, strong and steady,
everything was poised and ready.
Heads were turned to footsteps heard
upon the pathway. Not one word

was uttered as the maiden entered.
Her pace was slow, her steps well-centered.
An arrow shot straight down the aisle,
veiled in silk and gowned in lisle.

The bridegroom marked her progress toward
the priest, the ring, the wedding gourd.
She took his hand, their vows were coined,
they sipped the gourd and thus were joined.

That night beauty would grace the bed
of the suitor she had wed.
The ending that you might foresee,
however, is not what will be.

Our plots in life have dips and bendings.
The same starts have different endings.
She wed the prince who slewed the beast
that now comprised the wedding feast!

 

The above poem was written to fulfill these three prompts:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/07/19/fowc-with-fandango-steady/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/07/19/vibrant-july-19-2018/
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/07/19/rdp-49-welcome/

After the Ceremony

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After marriage, even after the mundane invades our life, hopefully, some of the magic remains.

After the Ceremony

Oh my dear,
caught in this star-studded cowboy boot world,
I love you more than an Oreo cookie,
more than bubble gum
or a dill pickle.
You are a full gas tank and my shoelaces.
You are both what keeps me going
and what I am reaching out for—
my goal and trophy rolled into one.
You are my ironing board and my blender—
what churns me up and straightens me out.
Everything in the world is caught up in you.

It is flowering, our ordinary world.
Zephyrus peanut butter
and turgid corned beef hash
are surrounded by rosebuds,
soaring heavenward in sartorial bliss.
The sewing machine is holy
and our Dodge truck dreamlike.
The fanciful and practical
are shuffled in our dream world
like cards at a poker table.
A washcloth and a comb soar heavenward.
Birdsong becomes a phonograph needle,
caught in its groove.
Verdant is the garden hose–
pulsating with a new vibrancy.

If I am a tax form, you are my pencil.
I am diaphanous in my kitchen apron,
a fairy in blue jeans.
I could sing an ode to your toothbrush.
If I took a measuring stick to our love,
the world’s breath would be bated,
waiting for the result.
Birdsong would issue from the teakettle
to chorus the announcement.
For oh, my love, our passion is a hammer.
A scythe that slices through the problems of the world:
the shopping lists and the crabgrass.

Love vaporizes our petty problems––
the broken dishwasher
and the broken fingernail––
I am thy bride, thy fairy princess.
Your pencil sharpener.
The trimmer of your wick,
the cooker of your sausage.

My dear, I am turgid in thy love.
You are what wrenches my heart
and nails shut the door
of every misgiving I might have had.
You are mustard to my sauerkraut,
pastrami to my rye.
Love in a Ziplock bag might seem less fairylike,
blander than white bread
and more Sunday School than magical;
but, you are my big zucchini,
my Dove bar and my Orange Crush,
and I am forever thy camellia and thy rose.

Remember me under lindens,
my footsteps filled with magnolia petals
and my cook pot full of stardust.
Heaven resides in our walkup flat, my dear,
and I pulsate every day
with the memory of that honeymoon
which was only our penultimate dream—
leading up to the chock-a-block,
stuffed turkey with all the trimmings,
overflowing Christmas stocking,
burst balloon filled with confetti,
blissful rest of that conjoined life
that with every morning alarm clock
will spill over us again
like a freshly split piñata.

This is a rewrite of a poem first written five years ago. The prompt word today was ceremony.

The Cloud

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The Cloud

The groom’s mother might be charismatic,
lovely, clever and dramatic,
but when she entered any room,
she was preceded by her perfume.

So her presence here was problematic—
in scope, approaching the traumatic—
for we had to institute some bans
to include her in our wedding plans.

For reasons we deemed bioclimatic,
(and her excesses aromatic)
when it came to finding her a seat,
we found it to be quite a feat.

For it’s hard to remain diplomatic
when the bride is prone to be asthmatic.
With no other possible schematic,
We had to seat her in the attic.

The prompt word today is “Aromatic.”