Wedding Bells!

I did the wedding thing 22 years ago and at my wedding were my dear college buddy, Arthur Cohen, and his partner Daryl Otte. So you can say it has been a long time coming but a wonderful day when Arthur and Daryl were married in New York City on July 24, 2011, the day same-sex marriage became legal in New York.

It was, as they wrote, a day fraught with potential disaster, "700+ Type-A gay couples with some serious pent-up nuptials-demand, 100 degree heat, a NYC bureaucracy that is being made by the mayor to work on a Sunday in the summer, and whatever the lovers-of-personal-freedom-but-haters-of this-particular-expression-of-personal freedom, have in store." Nonetheless, they hopped a shuttle from their vacation spot in Cape Cod and got hitched, well, without a hitch.

I was honored to honor their not-so-subtle request for a wedding poem. As one of the long-time married, I was moved by the thought of affirming, or re-affirming, long-time love.

Mazel tov, my friends.

Time and Tide

- for Arthur and Daryl

July 24, 2011

Gulls sweep the sky,

points of white unified in magnetic motion,

the way water glances, falls,

becomes waves.

Before they charted the tides,

the ocean knew -- already wedded

to the lip of sand, the way we were drawn to

the spark and shimmer,

pull and release.

We know --

still we want to name this,

chart the change and constancy of days and years,

stand and say we will, we still will,

we always will,

and kiss.

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt, 2011

Walkin' the High Wire

Just back from two weeks of 24/7 poetry writing at Ragdale in Chicago. New projects, new poems, exhibition plans, more news to come. But for now...

Some of you know me as a poet. Some of you know me as the Executive Director of the Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation that supports arts and culture in Philadelphia. A few of you even know me as both.

Well, this morning at the annual conference of Delaware Valley Grantmakers (along with Philadelphia's nonprofit partners) I came out as a poet, big time, when I had the privilege of kicking off the conference with a poem. They asked me and three other poets to respond to the conference theme, "Holding Together in High Wire Times." So of course, me being me, I started with some research on the definition of 'balance' which included "an object that is stationary."

I started thinking about whether, in the nonprofit world, the philanthropic world, or even our own lives, is that something we want to aspire to? Or do we just keep walking the high wire?

Balance

Find it the young men, their low-slung jeans

and unstrung shoes, shuttling down the handrails.

Above, the El expresses itself down Broad Street,

expresses us up to to the high floor hustle

where the window washer, swaying on his twin pivots

takes a swipe at clarity.

On 5th Street, she lifts the steel window shade,

sweeps the daybreak, dust swirling to the Centro rhythm

as the 47 spins its wheels through the Market,

awnings unfurled in the commotion of commerce.

No point of stillness in this city circus --

rapid transit of mass and weight and gravity

the push and pull that deflects our progress

diverts us with forces that are not enough

and too much, and we feel

too much and not enough, but stay anyway,

step out each day into air,

risk the fall, are carried away

ride this turbulent City.

(c) Beth Feldman Brandt 2011