Almost a year has passed since the wedding
came over the grass: the veils and feet
the clinking of champagne glasses, the rounding-up
(by a slightly-inebriated photographer) of the whole group
into a crescent between the low box hedges
where every plant played its part and even
the buds seemed promising. The white roses
gleamed like smiles and teeth. What holds
the recollection here still on the grass
in the lightly-moving breeze and the sun?
Not just fancy, though no footprint remains
and the flowerbeds have been weeded again and again—
it might be numbers, like the number of cattle
that bring a field to something like fruition:
the reason the grass exists. Here it was passion,
an old and true passion revived for a day.
The years they’d cohabited fell away
as if they swooned. The bride and her bouquet
advanced across the grass and through an arch
pinned with ivy leaves. A dark piano gleamed.
The grass shone and shone and surrendered to
the sky, the clouds, the breeze. The bride, with
foreknowledge, waved from the wedding car
before she alighted in the drive.