timothy grass mocking the cornfields, another forest path
through fallen treesnothing transcending the afternoon rain.
First, I’ll tell you how it ends: in a wedding of everything joyful,
all ceremony and hallelujah, sweating in a rented tux
surrounded by friends, roses and wildflowers, the future beginning.
This is the way it happened: I had lost the ability to believe.
Tragedy followed me like a burnt match, dead birds and thunder.
But for my dog that needed to be fed, I’d given up altogether.
Enter another, and within weeks I couldn’t remember not to be happy.
Within months we set the date to be married, and I can’t tell you
how simple and right, as cold water and air, each day began to feel.
Love superseded whatever faith I’d forgotten years ago,
when I thought it lost for good in a cloud of incense smoke.
Which is where the end begins: beneath a cathedral of oak trees,
receiving another sacrament after too many empty years.
When I thought hope had wandered off neglected,
it had only gone looking like a child for a gum-ball prize.
