A Wedding March

We walk together, a sweet cadence to our steps.

Crunch on ragged concrete, synchronized to

The tolling of the bells, a matching drum beat

To the tune of death. I divert from the path,

Wave down a chauffeur and sit in an ant-carriage

Drawn by the fossil of Troy, its body a brass loop

Circling metal upholstery. It lifts me above,

For a little glance at the little ones that keep walking,

Crawling as ants on a march to some colony,

While I sit. Then I’m falling and falling, and

Falling, slipping down the curve of the chariot’s

Chassis, like the shoulder of the bell has become

A slide. It shoots me down and forward, to the

Wedding of the little ants in their wood churches,

Where the rhythm of the bell booms like the

Heart of a lover. I jump from the carriage and

Wander around the jasper and beryl coffin,

Its casket witness to the union of Urim and Thummim,

Its handles like the crown of a bell. We all bow,

Say our prayers, pay our respects to those who

Cannot hear and walk away with the pallor of those

Who wake perpetually. The little ants wedded.

I walk shaking the hands of spirits who have died

After seeing the face of God and my arms become

A bead line embracing their waists, I feel like God.

A little way down the road, bellflowers wear

Their inverted bells like dresses, and sway with the wind

Like ghosts ringing the church bells.

They still toll.