Poem

[satyapriya]

Poor sorting: I like that: that it all gets dropped, the big stuff enmeshed with the grainy soft stuff. The indiscriminate mess. That it forms a long train, so that seeing it all, one can trail events back. Guess at them. View time. And by way of the whole scattered and shifting pattern, by the gathering eye, make something of these loose details, collecting. - from "Glaciology" by Lia Purpura.

Imagine the bride down the aisle,
white train leaving behind her old life.
Along the curated carpet:
a Barbie here, a skipping rope there.
Over by the doorway, a tiny engagement ring
given to her by a boy desperate to fuck her
when she was eighteen,
the diamond speck scarcely visible
amongst light refracting off the rock on her finger today.
Her life revealed,
like a shock of ankle,
or a glimpse of 1913 stocking.
Heaven knows, now anything goes,
as old bikinis,
and a school uniform are kicked
by the mother of the bride
into a spare aisle at the back of the church.
And oh, over there, the body of her first dog,
old Aldo, who endured her toddler love.
Everyone pretends they can't see
her history sediment roughed up and exposed
by the glacier-white of her dress.
She streams past, hands trembling
ever so slightly,
and face frozen in a smile she's practiced
for years.
The groom, at the front of the church
yet to be ground down to rock flour,
as she approaches.
New territory open for both of them;
climate change, and going-away outfits.
The rubble is left behind
on the floor of the church,
as she looks ahead,
as though she knows what's coming.

Comments

[snakypoet]

Enjoyed. But wanted the whole story, before and after – even if this does fulfil the terms of the opening quote.