Let’s Toast the Bride and Groom (over Zoom)

Let’s Toast the Bride and Groom (over Zoom)

Prothalamion in a Pandemic 

for Nicki and Ted 

The weather here is not the weather there. 
Still in their nylon sheaths, the wedding clothes. 
How will we fete this disappointed pair? 

A trap, a trick, a sleight of hand--unfair, 
The shell game of the word supposed. 
The weather here should be the weather there. 

We saved the date, but were mistaken where. 
Must we inside our houses strike a pose 
And send a snap to cheer this saddened pair? 

We must—must call, write, click a link and share, 
Leave on their doorstep bottles decked with bows. 
The weather here, though not the weather there,
 
Is warm, with jacaranda-purpled air. 
If not the peak of springtime, then the snows 
of winter for the union of this pair. 

Or maple trees in full autumnal flare. 
Or whenever they can pluck from thorns a rose. 
Though the weather here is not the weather there, 
They shall weather this together, tethered pair.

Antenna

Could one 
compose 
a poem 
in metal 
segments, 
long and 
hollow, 

they would 
slide, one 
inside 
another, 
down until 
they are a 
citadel 
capped 
with a round lid.
 
Then out 
again, a 
rigid snake, 
each piece gliding out 
to a stopping click. A pause. 

And then I would electrify, 
awaken it to listening. 

Would it be alive, then— 
drawing up power, 

sending its one transmission out, a wave, impersonal— 
would it be like loving the dead, the indifferent, the far away? 
Like loving you, lost as you are?