Prelude to a Marriage

By Roy Dean Doughty
Written 7/26/08

Certainly, the suburbanites are fond of trees,
At least as decorations, but the forest presents
Problems. They know that they have to keep
A wary eye on anything, which violates
Their image of internal fractionalization,
And so large and so cohesive of a conspiracy
Continually threatens to engulf them
With the long risings and fallings of treacherous
Once upon a times. Their sleep is
Still haunted by that trail of ashes leading
To the mysterious bridegroom’s house,
That feeling of ominous identification, which
Infects them with the innocence of a bride,
No matter what their professional qualifications.
She goes, this bride, night after night, deeper and deeper,
Through those densities of trees, rooted
Below the ground as one great being,
In search of the cure for the disequilibrium
Of human aspiration, but fearing always
The discovery of the indifferent cannibal,
Whose mechanical bobbing and nodding,
Reminds her of her own afflicted childhood,
And all those rituals of meaningless rhythm,
That only seemed to be leading towards the goal,
Which she has never quite attained. Sometimes,
The bridegroom’s head, as if housed bodiless in a black box,
Invites this girl to a late supper, which
He describes, not so soothingly, as “permanent”.
And it is just here, that she discovers,
Inside of her, the organic level of compactedness
Comprising peat and coal, and feels those
Racing spider-cracks of fragility stress-fracturing,
Through subtle changes of temperature only,
Throughout her defenseless bones. It is this internal ghost,
This girl who cannot find her way,
Who prompts them to order their landscapers
To gather only the most effete refugees
For their manufactured gardens, callously herding
Together English Walnut, Black Gum Eucalyptus,
Chinese Tallow, Canary Island Date Palm,
Nepalese Camphor, even Jerusalem Thorn,
So that these most gregarious of the planet’s
Creatures can only babble in the innocuous
Breezes as individual specimens, and never
Whisper of the wholeness forever absent
From the bride’s fragmented heart. Still, they, she, the suburbanites,
The bride, hear, hears them, it, the trees, the forest,
And in the midst of these not so random rustlings,
Begins to know how the local and global extrema
Of her shattered world differ only on the surface,
And that underground all distinctions between
The sacred and the tainted, the prosperous and the poor,
Are obliterated. And she, they, keeps, keep hearing, in those
Murmurous diasporas of leaves, a choir that says,
As if through a single, indivisible voice,
“Enter in peace, O crown of your husband’s jewel,
And live in jubilation among you’re your faithful,

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