United Stations

You are standing, facing west, on a hotel room balcony,
Just married, shaving, looking out at the early evening
Sun deepening its hue and dropping down, almost to sea,
The breeze from which smells like gin. The bride, inside, is showering.

She sings a sing-along song, altering the lyrics to make
It an explicit recounting of the day's activities
Beneath palm trees and suspended in an artificial lake.
There's a verse about her white dress-cum-symbol of chastity.

You wish you had a martini and could drink it all alone
At a muscular bar, your thoughts devoid of love's quid pro quo.
Contemplating the Pleiades, you daydream in classic tones
Of far-off places you've never been, women you'll never know,

And the heroic triumph of love over the worldly call
Of adventure. The choir of islands sing out in effect.
In a way, weddings are like real hair on a ceramic doll,
You think, knowing what you mean is that they're a show of respect

Handled so carefully they often come dangerously close
To parody. One more evening here in faux Waikiki,
One more moonlit stroll along the beach, a final champagne toast
Before heading back to your scholarly books and Joshua trees.

Bruegel's forger finished *Landscape with the Fall of Icarus*
Around the time that tobacco arrived and cause quite a stir
In Europe (such a stir that Spenser penned for immortal verse
"Trew Nobility: / There, whether yt diuine Tobacco were").

She likes to remind you of this when you get nicotine kicks
While she has to abstain. You say you'll soon follow suit. She quit
So she could go on the pill, and jokes that at her age one fix
Will undo another. Perhaps marriage is a peach with pit

Intact, a tautology of two factotums, equals sign
Perched precariously on a fulcrum of formality,
Not to take away from the heart of it, which remains divine.
The arch in St. Louis was started in 1963,

Christened 1965, as a testament to how we
Love to liberate ourselves and then quickly construct fences
To keep what's ours in. At your tender young age of 33,
Jefferson drew up the Declaration of Independence,

Its all-seeing eye bound to hypocrisy in history.
In the future, you'll supply the sperm and she'll supply the eggs
To create new life. But for now, you're out on the balcony,
Shaving your face, while she stands in the shower, shaving her legs.