For my parents on the occasion of their 50th Wedding Anniversary,

He puts on the dress uniform that reveals

His belief in fighting for a nation

That has imprisoned his mother’s family

Against the nation

In which his father had hoped to raise his sons

Fifty years before this day, the seventeenth

Of February, 1945.

She is a thousand

Miles from her father’s family, putting

On the only nice dress she has. It’s not white

But a purity drifts from the sky, dressing

The ceremony

In my mother’s belief that my father will

Endure, not the war, but the peace of a home

That neither of them will create; five children,

Unpredictable;

And the kinds of touches that mean everything

Only to those who endure. So they walk

Through their beliefs silent to each other,

Silent to their selves

About what happens next. Vows, tears, friends, and rice

Follow them beyond the church. Fifty years

Later, it has all come true, proof that belief

Is the same as Faith.

February, 1995

Poetry