[Brian Allgar]

Erik, could you choose a different type-face for the poems that you quote? Sorry, but I find the one you're using virtually unreadable.

[Jayne Osborn]

Erik, could you choose a different type-face for the poems that you quote? Sorry, but I find the one you're using virtually unreadable.

Hope you don't mind, Erik, but I've altered your posts as I had the same problem as Brian.

Jayne

[Matt Q]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions, although as Brian and Julie have pointed out, they mostly don't fit the criteria. The poem needs to be read by me, a well-wisher, to them, two women, so poems where the narrator is one of the lovers, or that assume that a man a woman marrying are out. Also, no religion.

So, as several of you have suggested I could write a poem myself and I have been trying, but I'm finding it rather difficult. I really don't want to stand up and read something clichéd or trite. (And if I do ending reading something like I'd rather it wasn't my own!) Never having been married, I can't really write a poem that offers advice or that praises marriage, and I don't want to impose any particular views on what marriage is, beyond the most basic. So anyway, I'm looking for a good poem someone else has written as back up.

Actually, I did manage to find a poem that fits the criteria, John Agard's Nuptials, so I'll post it below as example. I'm not convinced that I have the correct stanza breaks and punctuation, because I find it differently in different places.

Nuptials

River, be their teacher,
that together they may turn
their future highs and lows
into one hopeful flow.
Two opposite shores
feeding from a single source.

Mountain, be their milestone,
that hand in hand they rise above
familiarity's worn tracks
into horizons of their own.
Two separate footpaths
dreaming of a common peak.

Birdsong, be their mantra,
that down the frail aisles of their days,
their twilight hearts twitter morning
and their dreams prove branch enough.


Thanks again,

Matt

[Catherine Chandler]

Beautiful, Matt.

[Erik Olson]

Jayne, no I don't mind. If I had known that you or anyone else had trouble reading the font, I would have changed it myself. So I thank you for saving me the trouble.
On a different note, that poem, Matt, is nice and seems apropos.