Just in time for spring, this week’s poem offers us its own particular, funny and lovely take on wedding vows.

Gretchen Berg is a performance artist/educator and writer. She is the lead teaching artist for Portland’s Side X Side, works in rural Maine schools through the Local Stories Project and teaches performance courses at Bates College. She performs as one-third of Berg, Jones & Sarvis.

Fools Rush In

By Gretchen Berg

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight

of the spider plant that won’t die,

the Dan Quayle doormat

and two very dressed up little girls.

By the power vested

in us on our walk 2 days ago,

yesterday’s ten minute wait for the license

and our twice-divorced lawyer’s arrival today.

To have and to hold on New Year’s Eve

in the kitchen where our teenage son

has lined up bottles of the best champagne

this house has ever seen.

Do you take this woman?

Do you take the recycling out?

Do you take credit for being lucky

to love, cherish, honor

and continue this 30-year run

for better or for worse

from this day forward?

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is a poet who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2019 Gretchen Berg. It appears here by permission of the author. For an archive of all the poems that have appeared in this column, go to pressherald.com/tag/deep-water.

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