Thursday, September 24, 2020

Our RBG Story...and a poem

White House lit in rainbow colors after gay marriage ruling - The Boston  Globe


A few years ago, I learned that the mother of a friend of ours had been at college with RBG - one of the five Jewish girls housed in the same hall at Cornell - and they remained lifelong friends.  Our buddy had the opportunity to go to the Supreme Court now and again, sit in RBG's box and go into her chambers so these two dear friends could visit.

On one of these visits, our friend hand-delivered to RBG a thank you letter and two pictures from our wedding.  One of the two of us beaming and another surrounded by the dozens of family and friends who shared our joy.  In our letter to her, I wrote that we were so grateful not just for the opportunity to celebrate and recognize our love, but also for the rights we had long been denied.  A mix of emotion and pragmatism that maybe made her smile.

So in gratitude and celebration of how one person can make a difference in the world -- may her name be a revolution.  Stay safe.  Stay well.  Onward.

wedding poem

an altar waits    us to receive

blessings or a prayer      tonight we

choose faith in each other           

divinity as we make it        how

Eden was bounty all along   then

found       i am not one to tend

gardens      tend instead to cultivate

half-stories     eve without the apple

inventions and veracity

juxtaposed           but you

know how to read each

line            the poem we made

manhattan in January

   no tourists in st. patrick’s   faith

        once removed    

piety as we know it   belief without

question      overlook the looks of the

righteous            instead we

save ourselves    we are each other’s rescue

toss me a line    we will be poems

universes turn         spin

veer off the highway          slow drive

where trees are the canopy of our

x-ing            where ahead            

years wait            overhead the stars

zenith                   bless us

 

© Beth Feldman Brandt

February 2018