Like dappled down, her dress spins round

In unbroken shining softness.

They look like breathing dolls,

Smiling, singing, living in the green

Summer sun. The spreading warmth

Of love booms through the expanse,

And the excessant melodies and chords

Put forth their ecstatic approval.

Her piqued and veiled voice

Had given its own assent

Under the fabled golden dome

That morning and now her beaming

Smile speaks her happiness for her.

Their dancing shadows (

Brimming with memories of the dead)

Draw a new and electric radiance;

Like dappled down, her dress spins round

In unbroken shining softness.

Her deepest thoughts cannot be seen, hidden

Like the ocean’s impossible blackened trenches,

But behind her smile creep semblances of doubt.

No more laying in her mother’s arms

Late at night. Gone are the days

When her Papa drew out her giddy hysterics

From the dullest day’s delirium. But

Her gleaming monument of a husband

Holds her in his cool incorrigible embrace;

The tall boy-god knows nothing more than jubilee.

The crowd disperses in a fit of boredom, and

Clouds like so many blossom boughs

Roll in, as defiant as a beehive

And glowing with rain like

Some resplendent Shekinah.

Even from this far, in its steamy scent I taste faithfulness.

"Epithalamion (For Lindsay)" by Adam Palumbo.