a captured prayer

They frame your wedding memories snap by snap
as we pose, nesting smiles on canvas faces.

A joyful blessing, now frozen forever,
sent as a flashing prayer to the viewers

that will come. Acting now as both a prophet
and shaman, factoring what we know into

what we hope, saccharine-sweet prayers that He,
whom precise doctrine names but never holds down,

would bring destruction, with winds like Katrina,
to your now-constrictive views of love, and build

you both, red brick by red brick, into a house
through trust and conflict and reckless sacrifice.

Caught here, this mystic picture of glory, now
smiles, full of trick and treat; a framed communion.

A pose; a barrack for the storm warring forward.