Little to Say

– for Sarah

How did we get here
kissing cheeks in Kansas City?

I can’t count the undoings,
the old dogs we’ve put to rest
in Arkansan soil, Wisconsin ash.

To say nothing of the miles
we traveled to get here,
you from frozen rivers,
I from my Western republic.

To crease our wet eyes,
slosh wine over new appreciations—
a pair of dimples, your fostered cat,
our accumulated sisterhood:

made of postcards,
songs from your cello,
and our walk of abandon
through a French Quarter spring—

piercing chaste ears and luring
buskers from Jackson Square.
Eating each other up
like beignets at midnight.

I’d have foregone this unsparing wedding
in light of these kisses
as there’s little to say of such decadence.

by EE Lampman