Nine and Sixteen

We have finally tipped the scales to more in-marriage than out - we fell in love 16 years ago this summer, and married 9 years ago today...There has not been a chance for us to even sit together for a moment today to reminisce, what with camp, meetings, doctor's appointments and rehearsal;  we seem to be in the thick of the reality of marriage. The elastic cords that bind us together are stretched around graduate school, kids, the need to have income, life (life. LIFE) - and the good news is that the elastic is strong and flexible, not like the brittle dried old rubber band you find in the back of the junk drawer.  Wow - what an analogy, huh?!  All the same, we do even better with some nourishment, and I'm looking forward to sharing a glass of wine and some time with my love...someday!  

I thought I would share some of the poems we surrounded ourselves with on our beautiful wedding day - imagine a dance-hall barn in South Central Wisconsin, a thousand cranes, golden flags, surprise rain, incredible family and our dearest friends reading poetry, making music, encircling us with their voices and love...

This marriage be wine with halvah,
honey dissolving in milk.

This marriage be the leaves and fruit
of a date tree. This marriage

be women laughing together for days
on end. This marriage a sign

for us to study. This marriage
beauty. This marriage, a moon

in a light blue sky. This marriage,
this silence, fully mixed with spirit.           ~rumi

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth

day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any - lifted from the no

of all nothing - human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

~e.e.cummings

You do not have to be good. 
You do not have to walk on your knees 
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 
You only have to let the soft animal of your body 
love what it loves. 
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 
Meanwhile the world goes on. 
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers. 
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 
are heading home again. 
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination, 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - 

over and over announcing your place 

in the family of things.

~  Mary Oliver