It is Thanksgiving more than a year
after your wedding, for which I had tried
to write an epithalamion and failed.
I walk the fields of your father-in-law’s farm,
among leftover shreds of cotton
mixed with busted stalks. The peanuts,
which the bears ravaged, are sold,
but the soybeans are not quite
harvest-dry, standing like sci-fi insect legs
waiting for orders to move. Why
should I think of marriage
amid these sad images? I have
nothing to say about my marriage
with your mother. After thirty years
I have nothing profound or beautiful
to say about it, can pass neither wisdom|
nor warning. It happened while we raised you,
with little fanfare or movie-worthy drama.
But there is more that passes between us
in a look than anyone else can know,
despite the seasons’ comings and goings,
and I can wish that look for you
and your husband, the look that says
time means everything, and nothing.
Eric Weil lives in Raleigh, NC, where he works at a big box home improvement store. Three chapbooks: A Horse at the Hirshhorn, Returning from Mars, and Ten Years In. His poems have appeared in literary journals ranging from American Scholar to Poetry and from Dead Mule to Sow’s Ear.