Take a Stroll with Me (A Wedding Poem)
I know it’s not Shakespeare or Poe. Worse than that, I know it’s basically crappy High School poetry that should have stars and hearts penciled in around its margins, and I’ve resisted an itching temptation to edit it or improve it before sharing it, but I can’t. It’s my poetry, for my wife, and that makes it our poetry. I know if I’m to offer it up at all I have to do so in the naked honesty of exactly how I recited it on our wedding day.
Before we laced hands around the silver cake-cutty-thingamajig, and made the traditional first cut of our wedding the cake (that we never even had a chance to taste ourselves), I caught the attention of the intimate gathering of our family and close friends. I read, to a full and silently staring room, something I had written for my bride, my newlywed wife, Elizabeth. Everyone listened, but I read it to my Lizzie.
~
Can you take a moment that lasts forever to stroll with me,
Through time sliding to the past, toward our future that will be?
Let us wear the widest smiles as we stride beside one another,
I will lay my next steps as a father and you as a mother.
Feel my ringed hand, encircled with eternity, in yours,
Certainty and strength as firm as tides pulling at broad shores.
Feel the open palm of my hand across your swelling belly,
Touching the two of you, gently, I’m not being smelly.*
* “being smelly” is our term for being a upset, mean or a butthead.
Blooming ahead for us like friendly beckoning beams.
At last our fates with magic are beautifully interlaced,
And all our unfolding adventures will be joyously faced.
We will build our sacred home in each other’s hearts,
And bend the line where this world ends and fantasy starts.
Know that my love for you is anciently deep and happily wild,
I will always walk with you, my wife and mother of our child.
With endless love,
Your Husband and Father of Our Child
~
And then there was a kiss that shut me up for a good long wonderful while, with all of those shooting stars and hearts in the margins of my vision. My knowing hand on her tummy, full of butterflies and dreams soon to come true.
Jenny Hansen says: 
Julia 
Laurie 
Janette Henry 
Karla 
K 
