(I am writing this sitting in one of the great British wayside institutions- a Little Chef- somewhere near Skipton.)

We have been away on holiday for a week- more on this later- but today we attend our friends Stacey and Bob’s wedding at Beeston Manor, near Preston. Emily and I will be playing some fiddle/guitar music, and they kindly asked me to write a poem for the ceremony.

It is a humanist ceremony, and so I spent some time trying to come up with some way of saying something new about love. Not an easy thing to do without stumbling into a morass of sticky clichés. Also, my main poetic voice tends towards melancholic introspection, not quite the right tone for a wedding!

So, with every best wish to the happy couple- here is my poem of love;

The shared unknown

 

What more can be said of love that has not been said before?

I could sing to you of roses

I could scratch our names on trunks of trees

Or shower you with diamonds

We could walk through moonlight holding hands

Throw coins in Italian fountains

 

Or I could tell you of how, as a child

Someone sprinkled perfume on my pillow

And it smelled of you

Of how the sound of your voice is a flute

Blown by a desert wind

From some distant spice-filled oasis

 

But love is not captured in words

It also does the dishes

It takes the cold side of the bed

And knows all our guilty secrets

Love grows fat and grey and old

It gets sick and needs protection

 

So walk with me into this shared unknown

Love is a far horizon

Wherever you go is fine with me

These miles we’ll make together

For love is home when you are there

And will be so for ever