Original Poems: The Day I Got Married

i.

Another batch of poems were recently featured at The Good Men Project, and I once again offer them my gratitude for being a safe and receptive place for my musings. I’ll post one each Thursday until we get caught up. Enjoy!

ii.

This week marks the tenth anniversary of the day I officially married the love of my life. It was perfect: a low-key wedding (strictly family affair) at the best place in the world, on the cheap due to good luck, shrewd planning, and seizing the opportunity of those rare times the universe bestows fortune and you’re smart enough to smile and play your hand. The only bittersweet aspect was the absence of my beloved mother, the first woman in my world, to whom I wrote and celebrated (this memoir is getting revamped for a special edition—much more on that in the months ahead).

Having lost my mother entirely too soon has meant occasions (once in a lifetime, like a wedding; annual, like Mother’s Day or birthdays) are equal parts somber and celebratory: I mourn we what lost and I’m grateful for what we had (and even if I desperately wish she was still around, I’m so happy she was ever with us, and fully aware of how much we loved her).

And, of course, one of the things I love best about my wife Heather is what a remarkable mother she is. Her care and concern for Ben and Ellie is ceaseless (and contagious), but her love and motherly energy extends to her friends, students, and animals (especially our own ever-expanding brood); in every little act she is giving and available to those around her.

Not last, while it fills me with the sadness of missed opportunities—knowing how much my mother and Heather would have adored each other—I believe Heather represents the fulfillment of my mother’s most fervent wish for her son: that there’s an abundance of love in my life.

The Day I Got Married (One)

It started with a fight, of course

couples fighting is a cliché—but better

than the reverse. Consider the things

we fight: illness, ignorance, death and all

the things that die when we fight them—and don’t.

*

Couples that don’t fight don’t exist, or else

don’t care enough to defeat indifference—

which is slow death by suffocating distress.

*

We fight because we don’t like what we see

looking back, across the table or in the mirror.

Fighting is seldom peaceful, but peace at all costs

is apathy, and at least the death of certain peace

serves a function, it’s something worth fighting for.

*

What, after all, is the purpose of a heart,

sustaining the ceaseless calm of countless

could-have-beens, stalemate the default

of an existence unburdened by deliberation,

conscience, consideration or, finally, cliché?

*

We fight to make our nostalgia matter,

the past a concordance of best intentions

and achievement—a story worth telling,

since the way we earn memories informs

the future: the decisive fight of our lives.

The Day I Got Married (Two)

I think I’ve figured it out.

I hope I’ve figured us out.

*

And I’m at peace not knowing

secrets I’m not meant to solve.

*

I’m okay with some suspense,

I’ll reserve the right to hope:

*

There’s still so much to see.

That I’ll learn more as we love,

*

That I’ll love all what we find,

That I’ll find ways to recall

*

How discouraged I once was,

And I’ll nurture this accord

*

‘til death, too soon, does its part,

A disruption, not an end.