On the Monarch of the Seas
By Damon McLaughlin

Behind her, photographers snap this line
of suits and gowns, tuxes and gowns, her parents
celebrating forty years of marriage
with this, their unwed daughter.
Our first, I tell her,

and like a finch flits to a higher limb
to avoid a lower danger, her gaze shifts
to a wine glass and that waiter,
couples who embrace that false beach on a sheet,
the ship’s false interior, like a butterfly
might lift delicacy from its caterpillar body.
In need of something sweet, she sips Shiraz.

Now white teeth. Now cameras flash.
I float away on a wave of lights
like seed through fields of sunflowers,
my wife’s eyes, and mine
like drops of dew coming out at night to feed.