Fifty years it’s taken to get here
and the road’s all wrong:
the easy pavement with its white
sidewalks and marked shoulders,
the solid yellow line, cats-eyed,
ends

and everything I’ve passed by
at a distance
now leans in.

If life is a long walk down the aisle
to an altar,
then this must be the kiss
that lifts the veil,
loosening my tongue – willing or not –
to learn new vows.

This poem is from my chapbook, “Stealing Eternity”.