The Wedding Vow
Sharon Olds (2003)

I did not stand at the foot of the altar, I stood
at the foot of the chancel steps, with my beloved,
and the minister stood on the top step
holding the open Bible. The church
was wood, painted white inside, no people—God's
stable perfectly cleaned. It was night,
Spring, outside a moat of mud,
and inside, from the rafters, flies
fell onto the open Bible, and the minister
tilted it and brushed them off. We stood
beside each other, crying slightly
with fear and awe. In truth, we had married
that first night, in bed, we had been
married by our bodies, but now we stood
in history—what our bodies had said
mouth to mouth we now said publicly,
gathered together, death. We stood
holding each other by the hand, yet I also
stood as if alone, for a moment,
just before the vow, though taken
years before, took. It was a vow
of the present and the future, and yet I felt it
to have some touch on the distant past
or the distant past on it, I felt
the silent dry crying ghost of my
parents' marriage there, somewhere
in the bright space—perhaps one of the
plummeting flies, bouncing slightly
as it hit forsaking all others, then brushed
away. I felt as if I had come
to claim a promise—the sweetness I'd inferred
from their sourness; and I felt as if
I had come, congenitally unworthy, to beg.
And yet, I had been working toward this love
all my life. And then it was time
to speak—he was offering me, no matter
what, his life. That is all I had to
do, there, to accept that gift
I had longed for—to say I had accepted it,
as if being asked if I breathe. Do I take?
I do. I take as he takes—we have been
practicing this. Do you bear this pleasure? I do.

*~*


Yes... am not done yet with the "AWWW" :) Hope you enjoy this poem as much as I did.