Wedding Songs for Voice and Piano

I

Force me prone love, horizontal
so I can not see the shadows
turning backwards into seasons
before ours. But gently, gently.
You are at times almost too sharp:
A chromatic cascade or wave
of white Sunday Light
that
curves
reluctant to touch
my frightened earth before the
dazzling
second of your noon sings my spine
warm
for the look of you.

II

My eyes hold your like (mon dieu
you're fragile) violets fluttering
in an April wind,
exposed
under glaring day.
But you don't shrink nor
do violets - that's a myth -
but coyly
hang in gladdest garlands sure
sweetness of late Spring on
my
nose
and, my darling, make me close
my eyes till they match
the darkness (oh so cool, yes)
of violets and of you
and pray for night.

III

Your deafness is a dimension still
a rapt space circling
gravity, a vibrant
grace that can tune
its own spheres in a centrifugal Now.
You wait giving
your eyes only
that hear beyond
when suddenly they smile
across time's lightening
years to ring one star -

flung infinity of Yes

as you become word
and my eyes all ears.

IV

We tried to light a candle
rather than to curse the dark
but there was no candle and
the darkness came and it was
kind and whispered a soft word we couldn't hear because we
were singing so loud that the
darkness left and even our
shadows danced and disappeared.

- T J Beczkiewicz