"My love is a hundred pitchers of honey."
As I flip through these images by Michael Stavrinos Photography, I'm low on words and high on emotion.
I'll let one of my favorite poems take it from here: The Forgotton Dialect of the Heart, by Jack Gilbert.
"How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words get it all wrong.
We say bread and it means according to which nation.
French has no word for home, and we have no word for strict pleasure.
I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling.
And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms?
My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
My love is a hundred pitchers of honey.
Shiploads of thuya are what my body wants to say to your body.
Giraffes are this desire in the dark.
Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not language but a map
What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds."
-Jack Gilbert
What a privilege it is to partner with couples on a day where feelings are so deep and so wide that even the best-worded wedding vows fall short.
Thanks to Michael Stavrinos Photography for making it hard to narrow down a few images to share.
May each of you dip into your personal honey pot this week.
xo,
Mary Ellen