Epithalamion

On his wedding night, the groom

wakes up screaming.

Charley horse, his wife tells him

in the morning, when a dull pain

from his leg leads out of his body.

He doesn’t remember screaming.

Piling their luggage in the car

he does not fall into himself.

He does not look down. In the dream

he does not have before he wakes

his wife in the night, the trees

a kind of chuppah as the leaves change

color with the seasons while the rabbi

wraps the young couple in his tallit.

The groom does not look anyone

in the eye; he feels like a glass eye

that has finally found its socket.

If she held him in her hand

and then saw through him—

if a hole in the world

closed up, if a glass eye saw.

If she circled him three times,

he would never take off

his ring, which is no symbol.

A pain in his leg

that by the afternoon

is almost gone.