On Removing the Wedding Band

As though undreaming the mountain from the sea or tweezering hands from a watch, a quick-fix change of regimes: a democracy lost to a monarchy, an empty sudden village, and elsewhere the wedding party lining up like a lost tribe of refugees. As though a reverse whisper of vows into a pageant of elegant ears when the heat in the O cooled its "till death do us" and the storm inside seething below the flowers, gowns, and cake, its own Institution.