WEDDING SONG FOR ARNO AND JAZMIN

 

WEDDING SONG FOR ARNO AND JAZMIN

    Each be other’s comfort kind

            --Gerard Manley Hopkins

    Now you will feel no rain,

    or each of you will be a comfort to the other

            --Apache Song

Geologist and geology

time and the stone’s foundation

Public health and justice meeting

One voice from two

young love in a September wedding

How perfect you two are

What was just now two is one

No you or I but only you and I

Quilted now, a fabric somehow turned

What love sees in the two of you is you

Already with one life half-forgotten

What was unaware before finds hope and care

Blessed is the man Arno

Blessed is the woman Jazmin

Imitating Christ is good in every way

Grown beyond yourselves in the saying

of your love--Blessed be two persons

promising to live for one another--

What great demanding force

become delight--Not a spirit--Not a bird--

You make a city great--You two,

romancing, two becoming lovers--

Becoming faithful, you discover faith--

Surprising yourselves becoming one--

Such happiness in every vote you cast.

Jim Bodeen

7 September 2024