The Mountain of Myrrh, by Margaret Benbow

Vita Sackville-West on Her Wedding Day, photographer unknown. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Mountain of Myrrh

A wedding is a curing ceremony.
The priest formally disarms the dark
of spooks, red teeth and loneliness,
but the secret the rest of us know is that
white satin is so frail, and fate the guest
that's always hungriest and thirstiest.
My ears quiver like tuning forks
to these spells and pledges. I feel us all
conjuring safety and charmed zones,
a field of honey for the pair

because these young know nothing, nothing.
Furiously we spin from straw
a favorite saint  crowning each bedpost,
a grenadier with sword guarding the door,
huge wingspreads of anonymous angels
unfurling warmth and light
over the baby steps of the couple.
May they take care of their lives.

We can only hope. But this morning
through battering rains you couldn't stop 
with a train, cathedral stone
flowered into Song of Solomon beauty.
And at the night dance
we saw the bride's ordinary human hair
turn to a mane of stars.

Margaret Benbow

Margaret Benbow's poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, The Georgia Review, Poetry Hall and other magazines. Her first collection won the Walt McDonald First Book award, and was published by TTUP. She has recently finished a second collection.