in the strange light the white dress seems to drift

She goes blind down the aisle. 

Candles prick the twilight

banks of gladioli, fern, and baby's breath.

Abloom in polyester peau de soie,

she smiles a starlet smile, clings

to her wet-eyed daddy's beef.

The organ metes her steps in groans.

Her mother wrings a tissue in her lap.

The groom, monolith to the white cloud

she is, waits at the altar. His Adam's

apple bobs. He is a straight, black

prop incidental to this script.

Outside, night falls over the tableau

the flashbulbs freeze as the couple

ducks through showers of seed

and runs for the idling limousine.

Before the door clicks shut on all her gauze,

in the strange light the white dress

seems to drift like petals piece by piece,

until out of the net the drum majorette

pumps her knees. Her trim boots dart,

her white gloves slice

at cacophonies of dark.

Her silver whistle flashes, shrills.

[Jane Gentry {1941-2014} 'The Drum Majorette Marries at Calvary Baptist' from The Yellow Shoe Poets: Selected Poems 1964-1999]