On Removing the Wedding Band

As though undreaming the mountain
from the sea or tweezering hands from
a watch, a quick-fix change of regimes:
a democracy lost to a monarchy, an empty sudden
village, and elsewhere the wedding party lining up
like a lost tribe of refugees. As though a reverse
whisper of vows into a pageant of elegant ears
when the heat in the O cooled its "till death do us"
and the storm inside seething below
the flowers, gowns, and cake, its own Institution.