You, <br />slim but well-nourished, <br />not unhandsome, dark, perhaps of Middle East descent, <br />who's just come in the door at the speed of <br />a second-ring bellhop <br />carrying a neat cone of not many flowers <br />from the florist's down the road <br /> <br />but unsmiling, focussed, almost fiercely anxious <br />as if you were a well-trained rifleman <br />yet fearing that you might have missed one vital point in training - <br /> <br />what are you bringing from an anxious past <br />on this, perhaps, lifetime's vital day <br />for the girl already waiting there whom <br />alas I cannot see to burden with my assumptions - <br /> <br />what are you bringing from your past <br />besides those flowers, to take <br />into your anxiously-hoped-for future together? <br /> <br />No, you may not indeed, right now, be worthy of 'her hand'; <br /> - nor may she, indeed, of yours; <br />that's, perhaps, <br /> <br />the miracle of marriage.<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lines-from-the-pub/
