Mountain Wedding

At Salmon River’s edge,
Remoteness silencing my cell,
A wedding did I witness.
About stood conifers, ever pined,
and yellowing deciduous
shrugging off the summer season.
The weather was unusually obliging,
just warm enough to wet,
until the canyon's shadow at our backs
cast long to cool us crisp
in later evening hours.

Attending this were folk
Familial and familiar, widely hailing:
from cross the hall, the street, the state, the nation, world,
a Kindergarten classroom, decades gone,
the coffee house of yesterday.
Were this but two years ago,
Some would not be alive;
If turning time the other way, the same is true.
Here histories met, a quarter century’s,
To reaffirm old unities, a new one consecrate.

Preceded by their nuptial train,
The joining lad and lady
met one another barefoot at the end
of smooth and tiki torch-led sand.
They traded vows, to then and future hearkening:
A courtship in a Silver City,
the greatest friendship thereof forging
An alloyed lifetime strength.
Defying mathematics, logic,
for love’s unreasoned risk,
of one and one they made but one.

Then afterwords:
The best man, normally demure,
Articulated of fraternal pride.
The honored lady, ever buoyant,
on vowels and verbs escaping her was choking.
The newly-bonded jointly sliced
their modest double-decker
amid the torchlight and epileptic strings
as darkness settled like maturity.
I followed the departed day,
and left togethered friends
to dance beneath the stars.

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Come hither, friends, I must of tan-beds tell:
They have not Heaven's light, but heat of Hell!
For though we've Phoebus' steeds put to the bit,
They'll not their rider bear, they'll trample it,
With UV rays of such abundancy
Is matched by tanners, their profligacy.
A million souls do daily rest in those,
Not beds, nay! coffins hot enclosed.
This tanning legion, would-be Boehners all,
Are, like Ben Button, in an age withdrawal.

"More have been going since their years as tots,
Thus do more youth have Melanoma spots.
One patient mine, his skin had cancers three!"
Saith Doctor Zimmet. Would you disagree?
Some near receive their lifetime UV fix
Ere they're th' consenting age for carnal tricks.

"To combat this, the states must and do fight
With legislation," thus saith Lauren Wright.
Although Montana failed, there is a pending law,
I' a score of states, including Arkansas.
That minor access ought to be controlled
By doctor is a notion been well polled.
One out of ten such laws would like t' see;
That's better than Mahmoud his so-called victory.

I know no clearer way to out this spell,
So mark this wisdom, friends, and mark it well:
Not only safer is a minor ban,
It's also cooler than a killer tan.

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