I Am Without Socks!

For Pete and Cindy

Bridal Veil Falls guzzled like a drunk over the cliff edge only to burst into long ribbons of falling silk.

The ceremony took place the day before on top of Telluride Mountain.

The bagpipes, quivering and proud, wiggled around in my DNA, and made Willy cry.

The aspens lit up the autumned hills from within, gigantic quills shoved wildly into the earth with plumes of over-sized buttercups and gold coins.

What courage to be deciduous!

We all stood, grey and windy, waiting for the bride, and as she came into view the sun poked its long ring finger through the wallpaper and lit Cindy from behind like a billowing cluster of cherry blossoms.

During the ceremony Pete, Cindy, Beau, Megan, Sophia and Ryan all had their hands tied together, a tradition as old as a bagpipe, woven like a sash they are bound in symbiosis, as a sphinx moth is fasted to a primrose.

Back down the mountain Cindy and Pete walked through the streets littered in gold coins, drinking Veuve and shining like the sun-drenched moon.

And just to further prove his love, Cindy’s ring is an umbel of diamonds, like some undiscovered salvia growing low and quiet in the underbrush of the Sierra Madre, only once found by the scooped hand of a little girl, who dares not tell, for she knows that science may try to convince her that it is not a headdress for angels.

During the reception Uncle T-Pot’s “Hip Hip Hoorays!” broke me open like a chickadee egg in late spring, and I smiled through my sternum and out of my collarbones thinking about how much Dad would have loved Cindy. “Jesus!”

On this day, October 12, 2007, your love became an anchor that winnowed and sunk, heavy and fast, into the depths of the chests of all who surrounded you.

And to quote my dear brother Peter, the groom: “You knock my socks off.

“I am without socks!”

October 2007
Telluride, CO