Under Moelfre

A poem for a marriage

Whatever it is we share with folds of rock
Is nowhere to own and doesn't own a name.
Its hug was ours before we learned to talk.
When we stop speaking, it will be the same,
For all our anxious bustling and assessing.

Sense says there's only us, the way we dither
Plan, write poems, seriously discuss.
When a man and woman come to live together,
Why invoke the presence of a place?
Unless the place, responsive to hard pressing,

Carries in ice age crevices some spoor,
Some truth the planet cherishes, or seed,
That finds a future in the years before.
Deep age in rock, like weather, meets our need
And blesses when it doesn't know it's blessing.

Copyright © 2003 Anne Stevenson All rights reserved
from A Report from the Border
Bloodaxe Books Ltd. / Dufour Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission