Marriage (Feb. 12, 2005)

The man you formed
of wave and wind
awoke one day
in a woman’s arms
far from land
and a lubber’s verbs,
fanned in sparkling
blue. Baptized a
third time in
the waters of
God, I was healed
of one divine
wound and
thus maddened in
the next, questing
years to never quite
find you again,
not in any way
I dreamed. Yet here
in this married home
I have learned
to love you best
as may a mortal
man of modest means,
my love a sum
almost adequate
for my actual wife
whose life and work
rests folded in her
sleep upstairs before
the next hard
day. My questing
has subtracted
her from the blue
main though heart
for her alone is my
vow, the two
worlds kept separate
as the out- and inner
bands of a gold
ring on my betrothing
finger. Two connubials
I shore and shire
and gender forth
with every fire a
man of my years
and truth can steal
and forge and
husband. Perhaps
the wrong quest
ends each time
I shout this book
and join my wife in
our bed of daily nails,
to work and work
some more then drowse
at the long day’s end,
scant inches from
where we started,
our principal
scant paid down,
the ache requited
just enough
to keep the distance
blue. Who’s to say
the rowing here
and the loving there
are not greater halves
of heart no man
may master, much
less ascertain,
though his life
is shaped that way,
a shore of infinite
hosannas and just a
sigh to hold it all,
kiss enough to
valve the darkness
and bless the mess
on day further down
the the starry fate
you minted in me
that morning long ago,
when love was startling
and pure and wild as
sea horses and their
undertowing hearses go