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