Last Valentines, I wrote this poem about marriage as a seemingly fragile filament that binds us together, but, in fact, is made of something supernatural and has its ends in heaven where God is ineluctably drawing us safe to himself as one. I hope it helps married couples believe they can make it to the end.

Ascent
For Noël on Valentines Day

An invisible filament, 
felt across our face 
in a place that we had been 
a hundred times before.

This time, like a cobweb 
in the dark, 
we pinch
between our fingers,
tingling, almost shocked,
and gently pull
and follow where it leads
up through everything,
thickening to a cable 
of malleable gold,
hung from somewhere out of sight 
beyond the broad black sky.

And following, 
we feel the living filament, 
humming like a hovering bee,
a surging, living cable, 
hung above the hayfield
buzzing 
as a warning to the birds.

Yet holding fast 
(with every hair on end)
lest we should lose our grip,
we grasp now
not with fingers,
no longer pinching, 
no longer barely feeling
unseen filament,
but all the muscles of our hands
tight,
swinging by a golden vine,
no longer following a thread,
no longer climbing,
but being drawn, lifted.

More.
Encircled, banded
round and round, 
as with translucent gold,
bright python,
holding, lifting,
weaving us all ’round
like a cocoon
hanging, rising,
safe
through the darkness.

Still holding fast, and being held,
the rising ceases.
The golden cord uncoils.
and in the Presence
shining like the sun
as one,
we hear a voice
like thunder:
“I joined! I joined!
and none could put asunder.”