Poems to have and to hold

He’ll deny it, but once as a besotted teen my son said, with a sigh, “I love love!”

I love love too, so naturally I love weddings. A public declaration of love and commitment, especially from private souls, fills me with joy. I always listen closely to the vows, the un-miked ones, the nervous ones, the confident ones, the deeply-felt ones, and most especially the traditional ones. No offense to those who want more personal expressions—I just happen to prefer the old, solid words, the sheer poetry hiding in plain sight:

I (name) take you (name) for my lawful wife/husband,

to have and to hold,

from this day forward,

for better, for worse,

for richer, for poorer,

in sickness and in health,

to love and to cherish

until death do us part.

There are other traditional versions I like just as well, and one of those I was fortunate to witness this month in Washington, D.C.. These vows ended with equally beautiful words:

I will love and honor you

all the days of my life.

A very dear niece married a man I am calling The Most Happy Fella. He’s given this name both because he was indeed a happy fella and because my niece loves musicals (although I’m sure she’s never heard of this particular one.)

I left poems to celebrate and mark the occasion.

Let’s start with Most Happy Fella. Hours before the wedding I knocked on his hotel room door and handed him Naomi Shihab Nye’s “So Much Happiness.” I asked Most Happy Fella to pose with the poem as if he were overflowing with joy. The next thing I knew he was leaping into the air in a perfect, athletic demonstration of the opening line of “So Much Happiness.”

So Much Happiness

by Naomi Shihab Nye

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.

With sadness there is something to rub against,

a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.

When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,

something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.

It doesn’t need you to hold it down.

It doesn’t need anything.

Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,

and disappears when it wants to.

You are happy either way.

Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house

and now live over a quarry of noise and dust

cannot make you unhappy.

Everything has a life of its own,

it too could wake up filled with possibilities

of coffee cake and ripe peaches,

and love even the floor which needs to be swept,

the soiled linens and scratched records . . .

Since there is no place large enough

to contain so much happiness,

you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you

into everything you touch. You are not responsible.

You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit

for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,

and in that way, be known.

There’s nothing earth-shattering in noting, as Nye’s poem does, that happiness enlarges our world and sorrow diminishes it. But we live in an age of Instagram gurus handing out happiness hacks as if handing out tips for properly storing fresh herbs; and Nye has an antidote to these Martha Stewarts of our inner world, well-meaning as they may be. Older notions of happiness as a gift, a grace, a great good fortune, call for a humility in receiving it—

You are not responsible.

You take no credit.

Just so with love. If love were earned, say by using effective strategies for meeting a mate and doing the inner work to ready ourselves for a relationship (nothing wrong with those, of course), would there be such joy in finding it? Love would be reduced to an equation: effort plus openness/self-knowledge/appropriate boundaries/whatever equals Jackpot!

The kind of happiness Nye celebrates is an overwhelming flow, not dependent on us or what we do or what we have. Happiness in this poem is like virus, hitting one person hard and spreading out from there, infecting everyone in contact. And that’s exactly what happened at my niece’s and Most Happy Fella’s wedding.

*. *. *. *. *

As I mentioned, the bride is a great lover of musicals, so two different Broadway lyrics found their way into the queue. I tucked her favorite song, “Lida Rose” (Music Man), into her bridal purse. It’s an old-fashioned song sung by a barbershop quartet—as old-fashioned a style as can be—so it’s a funny thing that a modern gal would love this song as she does. Just one of niece’s interesting and lovable quirks.

“Lida Rose”

Lida Rose, I’m home again, Rose

To get the sun back in the sky.

Lida Rose, I’m home again, Rose

About a thousand kisses shy.

Ding dong ding

I can hear the chapel bell chime.

Ding dong ding

At the least suggestion I’ll pop the question.

Lida Rose, I’m home again, Rose

Without a sweetheart to my name.

Lida Rose, now everyone knows

That I am hoping you’re the same

So here is my love song, not fancy or fine

Lida Rose, oh won’t you be mine

Lida Rose, oh Lida Rose oh Lida Rose

—by Meredith Wilson

from The Music Man

If you never heard this sweet song, listen to it here.

*. *. *. *. *

Here’s the mother of the bride, my sister, with a copy of the lyrics from “Sunrise Sunset” (Fiddler on the Roof). You can listen to it here.

SUNRISE, SUNSET

Is this the little girl I carried?

Is this the little boy at play?

I don’t remember growing older

When did they?

When did she get to be a beauty?

When did he grow to be so tall?

Wasn’t it yesterday

When they were small?

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly flow the days

Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers

Blossoming even as we gaze.

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears.

What words of wisdom can I give them?

How can I help to ease their way?

Now they must learn from one another

Day by day

They look so natural together

Just like two newlyweds should be

Is there a canopy in store for me?

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears.

—from Fiddler On The Roof

lyrics by Sheldon Harnick

As the bride got her hair done, surrounded by her female friends and relatives, my sister and I warbled out a verse, more comically than poignantly. Turns out the hairdresser was a veteran of the theater, and even though she didn’t know “Sunrise, Sunset” particularly well, she gamely sang it for us. All the bustle in the room stopped for a moment as we listened to her lovely voice serenade the bride with these simple and powerful words.

*. *. *. *. *

The bride has visited Hawaii four times in the last nine years. I like to think my adopted state has a special place in her heart, so I left a traditional Hawaiian marriage prayer on her hotel desk, with a Hawaiian flower I had packed in my suitcase.

Ho’ao Pule

Hawaiian Marriage Prayer

Eka Haku, e kokua mai ia maua e ho’omana’o i ka manawa a maua i launa mua ai,

Lord, help us to remember the time we first met,

a me ke aloha nui i ulu ai ma waena o maua.

and the strong love that grew between us.

E kokua mai ia maua e ho’ohana i kela aloha i na mea ma’amau i’ole e ka’awale

Help us to apply that love in practical things so nothing divides us.

Ke nonoi ha’aha’a nei maua i na hua’olelo ‘olu’olu a piha me ke aloha,

We humbly ask for kind words filled with love,

a no na pu’uwai makaukau mau e noi i ka huikala, a e huikala aku.

and for hearts always ready to ask forgiveness, as well as to forgive.

E ka Haku, ke waiho nei maua i ko maua male’ana i loko o koa lima.

Lord, we leave our marriage in your hands.

‘Amene.

Amen

*. *. *. *. *

The last poem-elfing was a mistake, or rather, a misplacement. In my rush to the church I grabbed the wrong poem to put in the wedding program. No matter what the other poem was, it will find another home—this one, Robert Burns’ gorgeous “A Red, Red Rose,” rose to the occasion. With assistance from another niece (and she of Scottish ancestry, like Burns) I inserted the poem in one of the programs and wondered what the random stranger who got it would do with it.

A Red, Red Rose

by Robert Burns

O my luve’s like a red, red rose,

That’s newly sprung in June;

O my luve’s like the melodie

That’s sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:

O I will love thee still, my dear,

While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve,

And fare thee weel awhile!

And I will come again, my luve,

Though it were ten thousand mile.

“A Red, Red Rose” comes up in many literature textbooks and poetry anthologies, and in the past my eyes always glazed over it. But then I heard it recited on the season finale of All Creatures Great and Small, and now I couldn’t love it any more.

In the show, country vet James Herriot is on his way to war, leaving behind his very pregnant wife Helen. Actor Nicholas Ralph does a beautiful job with Burns’ poem. I could listen to it over and over and over and I hope you do too.

Turn it up—this is just so good.

Congratulations, Charlotte and Matt! Still feeling the happiness of witnessing your love!