A Marriage

The rain stopped and the birds began again

as if we had not escaped some fearsome thing,

lightning and thunder around us,

the cat in your lap, the dog under the bed

and the baby miraculously asleep on the bed.

The birds began again and our daughter slept on.

How had she, with the sky breaking open over her,

the afternoon wrenched from the rest of the day

and suspended like that airplane in Mexico,

a tiny craft, tossed about in an electric storm in June

on our honeymoon? Our hands fused then in a knot,

damp with sweat, neither of us saying anything,

but thinking again and again: we’re young,

we’re young, we’re young as if that could save us.

Perhaps our daughter in her infant dream dreams one thought,

one idea with each small intake of air: I’m me,

I’m me, I’m me and perhaps it is enough.

But we are not young, not you or me, or the dog or the cat,

and we know nothing to say to change the course of the storm.

We don’t even hold hands anymore, distracted by caring

for the animals, our daughter, the roof leak, too busy

with the business of living to hold on for dear life.

We ride into that storm we sensed on our honeymoon

when we held hands the tightest we ever would as if that grip

could define us and keep us together even as lightning struck

which it has again and again and will again.

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