Wedding Day (2011)

The hillsides smile with summer joy,
The vales with high romance,
While dryads play and fairies dance
In dreaming shadows, round a girl and boy.
He kisses her and leads the way
On this, the morning of their wedding day.

“So many times, my love and life,
We’ve walked this emerald lane,
And after this we shall again,
But ever more we’ll walk as man and wife.
Today we join as way to way
On this, at last, at last, our wedding day.”

And as he laughs and smiles and talks
And dreams across the ground,
She follows him without a sound,
For everywhere he wanders so she walks,
As now beneath the sun’s new ray
She follows him upon their wedding day.

The noontide waxes high and proud,
Froth-full of boisterous fire –
The image of his fierce desire,
For soon their love will finally be allowed;
Yet in her eyes the briefest grey
Passes, cloudlike, across their wedding day.

“My life,” he hears her softly call,
Her whispers brush his cheek,
“I’ll love you ‘til the sun grows weak,
Until the last and final night shall fall.
I’ll love you as I do today,
And all our life will be our wedding day.”

“Until the final night shall fall,”
He cries, “until the sun
Grows weak, you’ll be my lovely one
And never shall the vision of you pall!
We have what none can take away:
A love to live beyond the final day.”

They walk through forest, field and glade,
And by a running stream;
The hours each she sings to him
While lulling noontide slips to evenshade.
Around them now the shadows sway
From winds that moan the dying of the day.

They enter in an ancient dell,
The place their love was born
Before his wandering, lost and lorn,
Where first he sank beneath her lovely spell.
Again he hears that music play
Those dream-like songs, forgetful of the day.

A thousand voices, saccharine,
Suffused with subtle light,
Beguiling musics full of warm delight –
All flowing round him, rich and dark as wine.
Long would he linger, long would he stay
And drink their hymns until the final day.

His senses cloyed, he scarcely hears
His love’s insistent song,
Of how he’s lingered overlong,
How moments somehow stretched themselves to years,
Recalling now to his dismay
That this was once to be his wedding day.

He starts to run.  He knows it’s near,
The place they are to wed,
But all is darkness and heavy dread,
For when he shouts his love does not appear!
Instead he hears her far away
Soft-moaning dirges for their wedding day.

He chases her, but still she fades,
And soon he is alone.
The only sound the tired groan
Of ancient spirits restless in their glades.
He looks upon the sun’s last ray
Fast falling earthward upon his wedding day.

“Until the final night shall fall,”
He whispers, “‘til the sun
Grows weak, we said.  And now it’s done,
Yet never did I dream of this at all.
Now time sweeps on and I decay,
And never shall I have my wedding day.”

He wanders, lost.  He’s deadly tired.
His only wish to sleep
Forever in the shadows deep,
For now the day’s last ember is expired.
He wonders how they went astray
When this was meant to be their wedding day.

He’s old, too old to carry on.
But here’s the burial tree,
The heart of his eternity,
His loneliness and grief at what is gone.
It beckons him beneath its sway,
And there he sleeps until his wedding day.

The morning stretches forth the sky
And kisses warm the earth.
The sun – the mystery of rebirth,
The hope of men who know they are to die,
The eye of God to whom they pray
That He will bless their momentary day –

The sun peers down upon a boy
And girl, who hand in hand
Skip happily through a dreaming land,
So full of life, so full of hope and joy.
They laugh and dance upon their way,
On this, at last, at last, their wedding day.