Myth of Happy Marriages

Myth of Happy Marriages

So the feeling comes afterward

some of it may reach us only

long afterward when the moment

itself is beyond reckoning

                        W. S. Merwin

                        from “The Comet Museum”

It’s called sail rock and although

I’ve never seen it

from the sea I know it’s an island

of true stone that wind and tide

and other small things

have tried to hurl themselves

against, their shoulders bare to it

or bows or port or leeward sides

their starboard ass up in the air

with her pants down amidships

and the stoic pope remains all rock,

as though flicking

flies, as though it were

a grizzly with a fist

in a hollow log, claws dripping

with gold and comb and wild women

bees all frenzy of multiple suicides

against his nonchalant mouth.

The first time I got married I stood

maybe a mile in front and above

this gray shock

of granite.  The tide was in

the fog was in the gulls were in the horn

it was all anyone knew possible

in such place in early July.  It was liquid

predictability.  At a cross

between worlds my groom barely a man

fidgeted with his loose suit    

buttons his fresh haircut a little off

the ear—everyone was there—

except my mother who refused

on principle or hatred or because

I was leaving finally for good.

And we drifted like that, fraying

at the hem for years aft-

erwards.  Other ports.  Away from Lot’s salt

wife, we went down like so many

who climb hills that look simple

in the fog.

Later I wondered if last chances 

are somewhat like rushed

marriages.  They wrap everything

in tulle, or a suit and tie.  They pass pictures

around with dates and names written

on the back: Summer, 1996.  Maybe

it’s while Nova is talking about bears.

Maybe it’s only then I come to see

it’s 18 years later, and all those swearings

to keep and bear and swab have been

broken against every prow we ever stepped

on.  I can say most of that happened. 

Ok some of it.  Ok, just the bearing. 

All that keeping and swabbing?  Instead it was

the becoming (or else

I’d be beneath it) a solid wall

of granite while every craft he could

sail out on and arrive on came and went

the way gulls come and go.  In wind.

In fog.  And sometimes, while waiting

for lobstermen to throw out old bait,

perched on a cube of sail.  While the shore

waited, battered proud, always a credit

to lupines and guests.