The appearance of tears...

We were at a sweet, sweet wedding today.  We went up early to chill and visit with one another in Saratoga - a new favorite place - and then attended the ceremony.  The couple expressed and evoked such innocence and tender affection for one another that we all wept. During the simple ceremony, this poem was shared:

imagine the very first marriage a girl 
and boy trembling with some inchoate
need for ceremony a desire for witness: 
inventing formality like a wheel or a hoe 

in a lost language in a clearing too far from here 
a prophet or a prophetess intoned to the lovers 
who knelt with their hearts cresting 
like the unnamed ocean thinking This is true 

thinking they will never be alone again 
though planets slip their tracks and fish 
desert the sea repeating those magic sounds 
meaning I do on this stone below 
this tree before these friends yes in body 
and word my darkdream my sunsong yes I do I do
(Peter Meinke)

The best man wept, too, when he told of his friendship with the young groom - a musician - and the time they believed they had discovered "free jazz." It was a heady moment, he told us, that only came 40 years too late.  Then the young ones danced to Satchmo and held one another with an intimate fragility that brought out more tears.

When we arrived back home my sister had posted pictures from my father's home. This summer we will move him from his house of nearly 40 years to a small apartment in my sister's house. It is absolutely time and he is humble and maybe even wise enough to acquiesce. But when I saw the pictures of the furniture that has been a part of my life since before I was born, I was stunned - and yet a few more tears made an appearance. One of my daughters noted on FB that there is a basin and pitcher in one of the photographs that she was baptised in and hoped it might be available for her farm house

My mind went to the closing words of A River Runs Through It in which Noman MacLean writes:

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. 

I am haunted by waters.