I have always been enchanted by Carl Adamshick’s poem, “Epithalamium.” It was one of the readings at our wedding, and I’ve long imagined a little painting that somehow captured the sense of folding your destiny into another’s. It is particularly special and somewhat different to me now, as a mother. I believe I felt the poignancy of that poem from the earliest days of carrying my baby, and I reflect on it a great deal now, as I watch him come into his own, hungry to explore the world and growing ever more separate from me with each passing day. What enduring lines of connection exist between our individual stars? What destiny is folded into the fabric of our little family, and how did we find one another in such a vast sea of possibilities?
Epithalamium
Here you go
light low and long
in the fields
at sunset and sunrise
Everything twice
a doubled existence
two nows
two thens
two names
yours and the other one
also yours
folded into a paper boat
the points of which
constellate stars
Carl Adamshick, “Epithalamium”. Copyright © 2007 Carl Adamshick. Reprinted with permission from the poet.
