"Open to the Weather of our Time"

Reflections on Marriage with Marge Piercy

Lately, the Jewish-American poet Marge Piercy has captured my attention. While her father was protestant, she was raised in the Jewish tradition by her mother and maternal grandmother.

In Piercy's poem "Chuppah", she masterfully reflects on the iconic four-poled and often ornately decorated structure featured in Jewish weddings. While the beams are strong, providing parameters and shade, they do not provide complete protection from the winds or storms which blow through our years. We remain vulnerable and "open to the weather of our times", yet we're no longer facing it alone. Instead, marriage becomes a place of belonging and a centre to create a small economy of work, service, and loving thy neighbour.

Below are most stanzas of the poems, a feast for the imagination. *Best read aloud*

Chuppah

The chuppah stands on four poles.
The home has its four corners.
The chuppah stands on four poles.
The marriage stands on four legs.
Four points loose the winds
that blow on the walls of the house,
the south wind that brings the warm rain,
the east wind that brings the cold rain,
the north wind that brings the cold sun
and the snow, the long west wind
bringing the weather off the far plains.

Here we live open to the seasons.
Here the winds caress and cuff us
contrary and fierce as bears.
Here the winds are caught and snarling
in the pines, a cat in a net clawing
breaking twigs to fight loose.
Here the winds brush your face
soft in the morning as feathers
that float down from a dove’s breast.

Here the moon sails up out of the ocean
dripping like a just washed apple.
Here the sun wakes us like a baby.
Therefore the chuppah has no sides.

It is not a box.
It is not a coffin.
It is not a dead end.
Therefore the chuppah has no walls.
We have made a home together
open to the weather of our time.
We are mills that turn in the winds of struggle
converting fierce energy into bread.

O my love O my love we dance
under the chuppah standing over us
like an animal on its four legs,
like a table on which we set our love
as a feast, like a tent
under which we work
not safe but no longer solitary
in the searing heat of our time."



Drinking in all the oddities and beauties around me. 


Cheers,
Carolyn