Celebrating Wedding Vows! Two Poems by Crozier and Lane

Canadian poet and novelist Patrick Lane (1939 – )

A poet friend of mine is getting married today. And in a brief text exchange she invited me to remember how I felt the day I took my vows with my wife Somae. A great reminder of that day for me and the grace those vows have brought into my life. Thank you M. And it reminded me of the poems my friend Liz had invited Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane to write for our wedding. A total shockingly wonderful surprise. One of the deep blessings in my life. Thank you Liz, Lorna and Patrick.

And so in honour of M and J today and to celebrate, as in Lorna’s words, the wisdom and non-wisdom,/ the iron and the sweetness of I do,  I offer these two poems by Patrick and Lorna, poems Somae and I continued to cherish. And I hope that all of my friends and family members who are married can carry Patrick’s words: In your arms there are a thousand stories, a single tale, a whisper./ It begins with the wind in the cedars, your hearts at rest. /Be each other, for surely you are one dance, one wild thing.

Now the poems:

SMALL BLESSING FOR YOUR WEDDING DAY

The little we can give each other in this life:
a see-through stone, arbutus skin, a soft
invisible pocket to tuck a hand inside,

or, at most, a note. What is written there
will carry the cold and clarity of water,
water that goes deeper than your fear.

This is the word-water the heart sips from
and when your tongues touch
you’ll taste the good and wet of it,

the wisdom and non-wisdom,
the iron and the sweetness of I do.

Lorna Crozier, unpublished

Canadian Poet, Lorna Crozier (1948 -)

ONE WILD THING

Let there always be the comfort of silence between you,
the consolation of hands in the hour of the candles.
Their songs will find you, the frogs in the arms of the moon,
the far cries of the herons at dawn as they bend to the nest,
and the hummingbird’s wings at the stoop of their fall.
Let there be eagles and owls and the vanishing of quail.
Listen to the beetles as they make their thin music among stones.
In your arms there are a thousand stories, a single tale, a whisper.
It begins with the wind in the cedars, your hearts at rest.
Be each other, for surely you are one dance, one wild thing.
When you cry out, let your song go to the dove who mourns,
to the wren in her hiding, to the mole in his tunnel of grass.
But always let there be the comfort of silence between you,
the consolation of hands in the hour of the candles.

Patrick Lane, unpublished