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 has been published in Plume, American Poetry Review, Field, Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, Rhino, River Styx, and many other journals and anthologies. One of her poems won a prize from Smartish Pace, another placed second in Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Competition, and another received a Pushcart Special Mention first collection, Conjugated Visits, was a National Poetry Series finalist and was published by Dream Horse Press. Her second collection, Hue & Cry, debuted in spring 2020 from MadHat Press.

 

Plume: Issue #33 March 2014