April 4: Wedding Poem
Martha
Wedding Poem
Ross Gay
for Keith and Jen
Friends I am here to modestly report
seeing in an orchard
in my town
a goldfinch kissing
a sunflower
again and again
dangling upside down
by its tiny claws
steadying itself by snapping open
like an old-timey fan
its wings
again and again,
until, swooning, it tumbled off
and swooped back to the very same perch,
where the sunflower curled its giant
swirling of seeds
around the bird and leaned back
to admire the soft wind
nudging the bird's plumage,
and friends I could see
the points on the flower's stately crown
soften and curl inward
as it almost indiscernibly lifted
the food of its body
to the bird's nuzzling mouth
whose fervor
I could hear from
oh 20 or 30 feet away
and see from the tiny hulls
that sailed from their
good racket,
which good racket, I have to say
was making me blush,
and rock up on my tippy-toes,
and just barely purse my lips
with what I realize now
was being, simply, glad,
which such love,
if we let it,
makes us feel.
----
More of the inimitable Ross Gay:
+ from Burial
+ A Small Needful Fact
+ Poem to My Child, If Ever You Shall Be
+ Prayer for My Unborn Niece or Nephew
Tiptoe through the tulips and the poems sent today in:
2025: Becoming a Poet, Susan Browne
2024: Coyotes by the Eliot House, Glyn Maxwell
2023: I Know Someone, Mary Oliver
2022: I’m Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense, Danez Smith
2021: In the Morning, Before Anything Bad Happens, Molly Brodak
2020: Interesting Times, Mark Jarman
2019: The accident has occurred, Margaret Atwood
2018: Little snail, Anonymous
2017: Poem for My Son in the Car, Jennifer K. Sweeney
2016: Postcard to Baudelaire, Thomas Lux
2015: What The Dead Tell Us About Charon, Ferryman Of The Dead, Brett Ortler
2014: The Trees, Philip Larkin
2013: A Small, Soul-Colored Thing, Paisley Rekdal
2012: Last Supper, Charles Wright
2011: I Said to Poetry, Alice Walker
2010: Disgraceland, Mary Karr
2009: What To Say To A Bear, Ionna Warwick
2008: In The City of Light, Larry Levis
2007: the mockingbird, Charles Bukowski
2006: Part of Eve’s Discussion, Marie Howe
2005: I thank You God for most this amazing, e.e. cummings