Question for the Bride
04/28/2026 14:58h
Now that everything seems so persuasive
you will go on changing as always
it has always been the case with you
whether you knew it or not ever since
that morning in the swamp that Sunday
a sunless windy morning when
right in front of you a fat hive dropped
unbidden out of a blackened tree
a tupelo and where it fell the water
was shallow eighteen inches at most
but in it one hundred & fifty-six wasps
drowned so no you are not
finished your apprenticeship is not yet over
you have fallen in love inadvertently you
are the bride-to-be and now having
dressed yourself in the gown for practice
you must stand before a mirror
in the upper right-hand corner of
which all of a sudden a courtroom
will appear the litigants judge & jury
suspended there in midair a news
bulletin the reporter's face reflected
from a portable television far across
the room the sound turned down
the litigants looking tense or bored
the whole crew of them a little
self-conscious like characters who have
just recently been conjured though somewhat
incompletely by a staff of studio writers
in Century City California
In a field off a Vermont road later
this week you'll listen to a car ticking
as it cools the sound of the engine
blending with the cicadas in tall bluegrass
floating past as in a dream then
you will finger the veil & lift
your mother & father long ago set aside
in a folder for silences & song
you'll waken almost immediately
reborn you will have lifted the veil
though of course sooner or later farther
down the line that stranger the one
with whom you spend so much time
in your mind talking he will reveal
he is your brother and what
will you have to say to him then when
as he must he asks if you had
allowed yourself to lead a happy life
in spite of the fact your parents
had not what is it you will tell him
what answer can you give?