I am the family face;
Flesh perishes, I live on,
Projecting trait and trace
Through time to times anon,
And leaping from place to place
Over oblivion.

The years-heired feature that can
In curve and voice and eye
Despise the human span
Of durance -- that is I;
The eternal thing in man,
That heeds no call to die

Said darling daughter unto me:
"oh Dad, how funny it would be
If you had gone to Mexico
A score or so of years ago.
Had not some whimsey changed your plan
I might have been a Mexican.
With lissome form and raven hair,
Instead of being fat and fair.

"Or if you'd sailed the Southern Seas
And mated with a Japanese
I might have been a squatty girl
With never golden locks to curl,
Who flirted with a painted fan,
And tinkled on a samisan,
And maybe slept upon a mat -
I'm very glad I don't do that.

"When I consider the romance
Of all your youth of change and chance
I might, I fancy, just as well
Have bloomed a bold Tahitian belle,
Or have been born . . . but there - ah no!
I draw the line - and Esquimeaux.
It scares me stiff to think of what
I might have been - thank God! I'm not."

Said I: "my dear, don't be absurd,
Since everything that has occurred,
Through seeming fickle in your eyes,
Could not a jot be otherwise.
For in this casual cosmic biz
The world can be but what it is;
And nobody can dare deny
Part of this world is you and I.

Or call it fate or destiny
No other issue could there be.
Though half the world I've wandered through
Cause and effect have linked us two.
Aye, all the aeons of the past
Conspired to bring us here at last,
And all I ever chanced to do
Inevitably led to you.

To you, to make you what you are,
A maiden in a Morris car,
IN Harris tweeds, an airedale too,
But Anglo-Saxon through and through.
And all the good and ill I've done
In every land beneath the sun
Magnificently led to this -
A country cottage and - your kiss."

My mother loves her animals and me;
And, of course, my sister's in there, too.
She shows her love quite unmistakably:
She pets us all, no matter where or who.

I haven't sprouted yet a bushy tail,
Nor has my sister grown a toothy snout;
But I sometimes feel a dog in such detail
I pant and bark and scurry all about.

But I am glad my mother has a love
That cuts across the paths of innocence.
I know that her sweet feelings long will move
Me to appreciate her scents!

So close have we become in thirty years:
Intimate as sisters, thick as friends;
So intermingled in our joys and tears
That each familiar glance a novel sends!
Even sisters sometimes grow apart,
Remembering but dimly days long past.
In us there is a closeness of the heart,
Natural yet loose enough to last.
Life often can with mad indifference cast
A pair together drawn from odds and ends,
While we could not be better matched by art.

In-laws aren't always good as you are.
They're dragged along, the unasked friends of love,
Just outside the universe that two are,
Unsure of where to stay or when to move.
But you have treated me as if your own;
Quietly, you took your rightful place
As parents of us both, and we have known
The pleasure of a mutual embrace.
Our relationship is like an unplanned child:
The fruit of choices made for other ends.
Yet once the strange, unwanted one has smiled,
Love quickly rushes in to make amends.
Unchosen, you are nonetheless my choice.
So may we have a retroactive voice.

Cousins are our siblings once removed,
Our relatives without the complications.
Unsatisfying as some friends may prove,
Sweet cousins are the purest of relations.
In cousins there's a friendship of the blood.
No friends can share such natural vibrations,
So long requited, honest, rich, and good.

Wedding Poems