On A Wedding and A Missing Father

On that long walk up a short aisle
Huppah bound to rabbi’s brachos,
Would he, the absent father,
Stop midway, frozen-framed,
With his boy-now-man? 

There, on the way to the hope
Of this more perfect union,
He’d offer a final advice before
An old life ends, and another new
Life, and love, begins.

Remember, he’d declaim,
Remember
God, and Torah, and all
The souls and lineage back to Sinai,
And the haunted sorrows, but right now,
Here now, remember the joys.

Repair, he’d command,
Repair
A world always in need,
Lives always in pain,
The people who rightly
Upon you and yours make a claim.

Return, he’d demand,
Return 
The interest tenfold and tenfold
To those who love you, and those whom you have
Loved, and those whom you will love, 
For always and always,
Ever and forever,
Amen, selah.

And in that glittering moment of time
Out of time, the present
Absent father, in silence loud,
Blesses the son, and the union, and the wife,
And the mother,
And all the children not yet done.

Written some time back, for a deceased, dear friend’s son’s wedding. But brought to mine as I read about weddings now occurring in Israel.