HERE SHE COMES

When walking,
Your beauty is a fresh May skyscape,
All cloudroll and blue yonder.

And I am a high flying kite.

When you smile,
Your beauty is a rising sunscape,
All birdsong and horizon,

And I am a spire full of praise.

In loving,
Your beauty is a noontide seascape,
All swelling and sundazzle,

And I am a galleon set sail.

In repose,
Your beauty is a new June landscape,
All blossom and moonshadow,

And I am the dew on your rose.

Here in church,
Your beauty is a Christmas snowscape,
Drifting down the August aisle,

And I am your right-hand man,
With a gold ring shining on your left;
Henceforward,
Into all our future, I shall escape,


(1998)


Many church buildings are beautiful; the Church as an historical institution and pillar of the establishment is not. Was it hypocritical to marry in church (I’ve done so twice)? Possibly – I saw it more as a compromise, I think. There would have been too many disappointed relations. The symbolism of the rings is meaningful though, and a sense of ritual is also important to me. Hatches, matches and dispatches etc.

Not that this is a poem about the church (incidentally, the organist at our wedding must have been the only one in the land who wasn’t note-perfect on ‘The Wedding March’…).

No, this poem is about Lisa and the metaphors are an attempt to convey what a beautiful person she is. I wrote this for her on the occasion of our wedding on the 1st August 1998.

Most people’s wedding pictures can seem rather dull in retrospect and ours are no exception so rather than a shot from the day I’m including one of my favourite pictures of Lise which I took a few Christmases ago.