WISHES FOR A WEDDING

These are some of the white things:

The spider's web that weaves and welds itself
Between the post and the door to the warm house,
The web white in the sun,
Silver when the sun sets,
Beaded silver by drops of rain, by fogs, by mist,
Jeweled by grey weather,
As many silver days as there are drops in the web,
As many as there are hairs on your head,

The white-bellied spider who weaves the web,
A silver pen in each of her eight claws,
In her belly eggs of the eight-clawed young
Each of whom will hatch and inscribe your name
On the book of days, on all the pages,
Again and again,
How can you not live forever?

All the things that stay white as the season
Closes itself in, the small, melted sun up high,
Which has taken back the leaves and their colors,
But still it is white,
The birch trunks that startle the mountains
Like lightning, mountain sides where nothing
Seems to move or can move until spring,
Yet these lightning flashes move, if only
The eye, watching,

All the white buildings with black shutters,
All the church steeples of New England
With their beautiful bells, their cascades of white notes
Every Sunday, their brides drifting out in long veils
Like snow across meadows,
The children in baptism robes, the robes drifting
White before altars,

All the white snow, falling,
All the clean, curved, unending pages of meadows,
This great book, take it: it belongs to you,
The surface of the grey lake
That turns white and silver under the small sun at noon,
The etchings of skaters, all their messages,
The startling white of ganders who swallowed enough light
To brighten the season,
(And the sun-color of their beaks: not white,
But take them)
The great page of white sky over the meadows,
Over the tin roofs shining white in the sunlight,

The surf-sound of the white snow
Falling from the roof onto the hard ground,
The softness of the ground covered with snow,
That too is for you,
The snow falling among the thin bare trees
Standing there like so many cold aunts
In the house of an unloving relative
Who will not heat them,
But when the snow falls, they are changed,
Even their names change, the black word
Spinster falls from them,
The snow lies along the lines of their branches
Like fur, jewels the weary green boughs of the pines,
Lace everywhere! As if every spinster in every country
In every century threw down her handiwork
And it settled in the trees that surround you,
And the snow swirls into snow brides,

The white cat who steps through the white snow,
The little black tracks he leaves,
See them filling with snow, white on white,
Each footstep holding its shadow,
Its small blue shadow,

The white wolf hunting deep in the white woods
Who is not lost,
The white dog asleep in front of the wood stove,
The white smoke drifting up from brick chimneys,
The white walls freshly painted, their texture of chalk,
Six white eggs in a nest, none of them broken,
When they hatch
All the messages they will write on the sky,
All the stories, all the white stories,

The whiteness of cheeks, the white smell of lilies,
All piling up outside the window,
Blowing in drifts, darkening the rooms
The white candles that waver in darkness,
The white bulbs that shine out like geese,
The snow over the windows,

So you are sealed in, there where you are together
For as long as you live together,
Until the snow melts, and after,
Always that sealed-in place to go back to,
Here: take the white key.

It turns in the white lock.
It opens the white door.
In all the world, there is only one door.
(And all the other colors, they are for you:
Take them, too.