Where the Arrows Fell

V. Penelope Pelizzon

At the upturns of your grin, the red beard 

                              This year's begun threading itself with white. 

          "Each agéd hair a gift" -- kiss -- "from you." 

                    You're joking, mostly. But in some deeper sense 

 It's true: we're married now, you've vowed 

                              Your life and all your coming years to me. 

                    Whatever other nuptial rites we cast out 

                    As too tribal, not our style (the virgin 

 Gown, the given girl, the fertility- 

                              Provoking garter), we assume we'll weather 

          Through the turning hairs, or their decline, 

                    Together. And if we're successful, one of us, 

 Barring some unlikely twinned demise, 

                              Must end without the other. That's why 

          I cried before our rustled-up, gum- 

                    Chewing justice who kept calling you "Andy" 

 By mistake. You thought it was my normal mild 

                              Hysteria, mixed with trying not to laugh. 

          (I did wonder whether it would count as legal 

                    If he pronounced me the wrong man's wife.) 

 But it wasn't the Southern Gothic bridal 

                              Sapped me, love; it was all I was consenting 

          To: the life ahead we hope will use us fully, 

                    Wizening our bodies well as two liveoaks 

 Whose branches interlace fantastically 

                              Before they fail. Half-felled 

          Myself, I stood below the courthouse chapel's 

                    Fairy-lit take on the Bower of Bliss, 

Facing past the plastic fern to the abyss. 

                              Nothing bridges it. But you 

          Stood on its edge with me, grinning broader 

                    Through your beard each time our tipsy 

 String-tied gentleman bluffly 

                    Rechristened you. And seventy-five dollars 

          Later, on the streetcar toward our fancy 

                    Lunch for two: "It isn't every groom who'd eagerly 

 Give up his name. That makes you ... Mrs. Who?" 

                              By then, you'd driven my existential vapors 

          Off enough so I could laugh. And 

                    In spite of the humidity, the trolley 

 Chuckling fast along its tracks stirred up 

                              A cheerful draft. On either side the trees 

          Refreshed the street with sunshot shadows, so 

                    We flashed giddily through alternate 

 Bright blinks and blacknesses. Somewhere 

                              In the canopy, a woodpecker 

          Uncorked his bubbling flute. Time felt 

                    Suspended, balancing between symmetric 

 Poles where gravity is countered by 

                              Velocity as, years before, our bodies 

          Pressed together learned to take the hair- 

                    Pin curves along a coastal cliff by gently 

 Leaning with the motorcycle's angle 

                              Toward the road. 

                                                        Then you turned to me 

          And, with a question, broke the spell. Remember 

                    How I answered you? "I will. It's true. I am. I do."