Love is a Three-Legged Cat, a Poem for Marriage

For Lionel and Janet, November 27, 2005

Dear Bride, when I first met your Groom last autumn
under the trees in front of the Library at 42nd Street,
I sensed a shift in the universe, a settling of two souls.
The sunlight was golden and the sky was a masterful blue.

And when, months later, you e-mailed out a photograph
of your new pet, Wally, a three-legged cat, content and
basking in a patch of sunshine, everything fell into place.
For true love is a three-legged cat, cherished despite its imperfections.

Yet Wally has no memory of a missing limb, he knows
no other existence, knows only that he is Love,
he is happy to be what he is and will continue to be.

I looked for other poems, published poems by famous poets,
to read on your wedding day, but nothing I found fit.
I kept thinking of Wally, and the joy that you and Lionel share, as a couple,

the love of that three-legged cat, reclining in the sunshine,
knowing without knowing, through half-closed feline eyes
that the union of two souls is powered by all that is right in the world,
Two Loves, holding one another in silence,

listening to the perfect sound of contentment,
pouring forth, purring forth,
emanating in waves from a three-legged cat,
echoing and accompanying your two beating hearts:
a Symphony tuning its instruments for this day
and the next, the concert of a lifetime
together.