The Wedding Toast

The shuffle of dancing shoes and swish of satin is silenced now.
Here and there, atop white linen, cake crumbs scatter a trail
to a champagne flute that stands, as if at attention, as if
it were remembering the exact moment when you raised it
high into the air, as if it had watched you turn toward me,
your face bursting with hope, your eyes encouraging me
to meet your toast, to raise the matching flute, to interrupt,
with a tinkle of Irish crystal, the hushed anticipation of all
who strained to hear the gentle promises you made
with brilliant earnestness on that Saturday in May.

Did you know, at that moment, that through all the Saturdays
to come— those spring days when we would feed each other
coffee cake on a porch newly warmed by a higher slant of sun;
or August afternoons when we’d slip our kayaks soundlessly
through lily pad bouquets, hulls rippling wakes of river water;
or Indian Summer mornings when fallen leaves would stream,
like confetti, over Bald Rock Mountain trails; or winter afternoons
when, snowshoe bound, we’d try to tease one more hour
out of the waning daylight— our future would meet the promise
of the toast you made that glorious day?

A Diamond Anniversary

For Mom and Dad, on their Sixtieth Wedding Anniversary
February 3, 2008

With Julia and George beside you, you long ago joined hearts
and stepped with the certainty of youth from a white-clapboarded,
steeple-topped country church into brilliant February sunshine.

For 10 years, you affixed tin pins to diapers on babies’ bottoms,
sent growing girls off on yellow buses, shared evening meals,
birthdays, Christmas trees in a four-room apartment, driving truck,
saving up, making do, finding love’s treasures in the midst of hardship.

The next 10 years you spread your wings in a new home,
built from scratch, with hands hardened by experience,
serving Sunday dinners of pot roast and potatoes on china plates,
watching your half-dozen swimmers splash and float
in the neighborhood’s only pool, with willows weeping out front,
and tulips rising, faithful as lovers, each spring.

Beauty, like a pearl, often comes from the sand of life—
And the next 10 years you spent together and apart,
Your children marrying, moving on and away.
Everyone discovering strength in solitude
but joy and comfort in unity.

In the midst of the next generation’s bounty,
nine grandchildren toddling about,
you faced adversity. Losses ruled—
health, business, even flames that burned brighter
than a ruby’s eternal flame. Out of ashes, though,
You nested anew, started again, and life turned golden—
a daughter returned, grandchildren grew in summer sunshine
as year after year we gathered, lakeside, to swim
and soak up the sun, sharing laughter and life stories,
growing the circle of family and friends.
10 years of quiet optimism and both of you settling
into sweet serenity with new eyes to see each other,
new hands to carry a cup of coffee and a morning paper bedside.

In this, your current decade, you stand poised and ready
for all the joy that comes from loving well, from imprinting
the hearts of so many children and grandchildren.
Turn now to face each other, as you did sixty years ago,
with the comfort of all that loving, all that believing,
all that constant and abiding faith.