Diane K. Martin

First Wedding

It was one of those days when not even the bland sun

could lift the pinched green leaves of rhododendron,

when, if she’d looked out the window as at a TV screen,

she might have seen the news broadcast as a frozen grackle,

black feathers iridescent as oil, beady eyes looking at nothing.

But if, on the other hand, as icicles hung tinkling like beaded finery,

it might have been a day of enchantment, not foreboding,

the bird just a thing of pathos, the cold merely cold.

As it was, she concentrated during the Mass on conjugating

the French verb vouloir, as she might have done, feet stirrupped

on the doctor’s table, and when the priest asked if she took this man

till death did her part, she said je le veux, smiling up at him.

Author: Diane K. Martin

Diane K. Martin lives in West County, Sonoma, California. Her work has appeared in PLUME, American Poetry Review, diode, Field, Harvard Review, Laurel Review, Narrative, Rhino, Tin House, and many other journals. A poem was awarded second place in the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize, judged by B.H. Fairchild. Another poem received a Pushcart Special Mention, and yet another won first prize from the journal Smartish Pace. Her first book, Conjugated Visits, a National Poetry Series finalist, was published by Dream Horse Press. Her second collection, Hue & Cry, was published by MadHat Press.

 

Plume: Issue #33 March 2014