PAD Challenge Day 3

Today's dual prompt from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (a) write an apologetic and/or an unapologetic poem, (b) write an epithalamium (a poem to a bride, or more gernerally about a wedding). Here's my result:


A Day in July

I won’t apologize for the weather,
one of the hottest days of the summer.
I won’t apologize for the venue either,
a little chapel on campus, not some
cavernous cathedral. I won’t apologize
for our shoestring budget - the lack of a limo,
how we went to the reception in her dad’s
old Pontiac, with her friend from next door
as chauffeur. I have no regrets for the music
I stayed up all night to tape, despite a lack
of tunes you could dance to. I’m not sorry
for the snafus – forgetting the marriage license,
her reciting my vows in her nervousness.
I won’t even make excuses for the fact that
my fly was open through half of the reception.
All I know is the ends justify the means,
and looking back from a perspective
of thirty-eight years, the day couldn’t
have been more perfect.