Most Like an Arch This Marriage

John Ciardi (1916-1986)

Three years ago today, my now-husband got down on one knee on a very, very cold beach (in his hometown on Cape Cod), and proposed. The scene behind him looked like an Edward Hopper painting; the waves were blue and barely white-tipped, and a pale house with black shutters on bluff, far, far down the beach stood out against the sky. The air was so cold that it gave everything we saw an extra sharpness. Each rock and stone stood out against the nearly cloudless sky and the coarse sand of the beach.

We got a feel for that extra sharpness when we both fell, laughing and crying, after I tried to hug Ben.  Monuments of grace we are not, but we’re lucky, three years later, to be as happily in love as we were that day.

This week I thought I’d memorize one of the six poems that our friends and family members read at our wedding (we chose two prose selections too, but that’s for another time). My dear friend Aaron read “Most Like An Arch This Marriage” for us, and you can read it here.