To the Outdoor Wedding

All come, forgive, and bless the dogmatic over-ripe bride
who insists she will be married in the garden
of her dead mother, though the guests and wedding party
hiss and shiver as the light rain turns unrepentantly
to pelting ice. All rise, and love the narrow bridesmaids,
numb and under-dressed in lavender slivers of spaghetti strap,
and listen to their teeth shatter as they scurry down
the aisle, drawn to the collective body heat
of the groomsmen and minister shifting from foot
to foot under the wavering trellis of altar. Praise
the wind picking up mightily, and the groom, unsteady
and sallow, who does not beam when she appears
in blown splendor on her father's arm-and the guests
who are wet-faced, their heads bowed down
to keep the sleet from stinging. It is the bride, prayer-
ful and confident in her white faith, we have to thank
when a gust picks up and wraps her long veil three times
around her father's head, shrouding him from the booming
garden tent about to unpluck itself from the soggy ground.
Who else but her to be thankful to when instead of the tent,
her veil snaps free from the father's flailing and lifts high,
then thrashes away over the Indiana cornfields, just now
brilliant in their new spring greening-the green shine,
the sumptuous periwinkle sky, the brilliant white strata
folding into itself, and dropping its knot-but wait! Again
the wind sends it sailing and the guests, heads up now,
mouths open in collected prayer of ah and ah as the veil
transforms into a bucking Chinese dragon, taking away
all that is old, folding, dancing off and far. The guests
gather themselves and offer the warm utterance
ooh when from the thawing and newly planted fields
a thousand black starlings lift in alarm.