Every day, I drive by the grave
of my fiancee’s father.
She lost him when she was one.
He’s our intimate stranger,
our guardian angel,
floating a la Chagall
just above our heads.
I go to him for love-lessons.
He touches my hand
with that tenderness
the dead have for the living.
When I touch her hand so,
she knows where I’ve been.
At the wedding,
he’ll give her away to me.
And the glass he’ll raise to toast us
will be a chalice brimful of sun,
his words heard all the more clearly
for their absence, as stone
is cut away to form dates.
Clod & Pebble 