Lorelei Kay

 

Attending My Former Lover’s Wedding      

 

Before the long-robed priest they stand,

all smiles, my ex-lover and his soon-to-be

new bride.

 

Yet moments before the ceremony began,

he confessed to me his feet felt icy cold,

and at any moment they might skedaddle

 

for the hills. But chilled or not, instead of

fleeing, they inched their way languidly

up the aisle toward the wooden altar.

 

During our many years together, he chose

hiking mountain tops over attending mass,

and outdoor vistas over sacramental wafers.

 

He also chuckled gleefully at the grandiloquent

hats he’d seen perched flamboyantly atop

hallowed heads at any high and holy mass.

 

Until her.

 

Now he kneels piously at his own wedding

mass, before the priest who speaks with an

accent he used to declare “too foreign to

 

understand.” His home hosts their reception,

showcasing his pride of bachelorhood—

brass moose lamps, bear pictures, and rugs

 

running perpetually amuck with tracks

of deer, moose, and bears. Not only

his manly cave, but his manly Shangri-La.

 

All because he said “I do,” he now has

Mary Ann residing in his bedroom, and a

three-and-a-half-foot statue of the Virgin

 

Mary presiding in his living room.

The bears, moose and elk paw restlessly,

all glaring at these new intruders.

 

With two new women moving in,

how many of them might soon be

forced to move on out?