wedding dress, wedding dress

This evening, I received an early Christmas present from my brother, Bobby. Eleven years ago, he wrote a poem for Troy and I. The first time I heard it was when he read it out loud at our wedding. After the chaos of the reception, the honeymoon, the moving in to Troy's apartment, the getting used to being married, I wanted to display it but alas neither Bobby or I could find a copy of it anywhere. This week, while digging through his basement, Bobby discovered an old journal containing, hooray!, the entire poem, which he kindly typed and framed for me. It is a masterpiece, an extraordinary description of the truths I would later discover by way of living and loving and tripping and falling - truths he managed to foretell while still so young, so inexperienced. I am sharing it with you below - this treasured, treasured memento from my past:

July 5, 1997

The young in you
The fever summer flushing out blushes
Salt oil for your joints; joint grass hair-
Inky, tangled, prolific
Like the doodle-mark spirals drawn by the
child in you
But dark and stiff like brush bristles-
In protruding stalks of winsome thoughts
That grow happily and easily
From a head heavy with time
So much time
A future being fed to you in ladles of
moonlight
This dream in you
The young in you
Is not yours.

The God in you
Not the silver-flecked figure
Packaged neatly in gilt-edged hymnals
A sardine in his opaline soup
A quivering iridescence
Caught like cod this God in you
Solid and secure in a snarled neuron net
(more holes than thread)
But the mystery - silver, too, only quick and
mecurial
An early morning sunbeam dazzle
That's felt, even seen in your half-
awareness
Then neither seen nor felt nor heard from
Once the SNAP
The numbing shock of consciousness
So it's engaged
Like thrusting your head into mountain
water
(Do you own the stream?)
Like tapping a tree for sweet syrup
(Can you possess the wild and rooted?)
Like sucking vinegar from a wide-mouthed
cup of salvation
Clumsy, earthly activities all
To punctuate days and lure back the dawn in you
The God in you
Who is not yours.

The you in you
The he in you
The she in you
Who acquires who
In the hammering out of years
Like the pounding out of armor
To protect what's afraid in you?
Cracked coffee cups, growing laundry heaps
Converging like tectonic plates
That turn molehills into mountains
Credit checks and checkered pasts
Dead flakes off burnt steaks
What's really at stake?
Even Sunday morning papers and the greasy pleasures they afford
Leafy autumn walks, drowsy midnight talks
drunk with verbosity
A shared plum
The illusion of being known
As when a twin finishes the other's
sentence
The other in you
Even the you in you
Is not yours.

So what's left in you
When all that's real to you
Will fade like a summer tan
And the young in you
The God in you
The other in you
Prove as ethereal as spoonable weather-
Caught rainbows, canned snowflakes
Beat, whipped, and spread thick on brown
bread
What then is left in you?
Breath, for one thing, breathing
Life, my two friends, living
Faith yawning, eclipsing doubt's
shortcomings
Comings and goings, trips and treasure
Transcendence found like silver dollars on
sidewalks
For foolish spending
Love, loving
Moments that roll around your tongue
Drip from your mouth
And stain your clothes with scarlet passion
Relent, release, retreat, my twilight companions
For it's into twilight that we're born

- Bobby Maddex