When Johnny Brewton married Giselle Orsolio, I approached Neeli Cherkovski to write a poem for the occasion. I had met Neeli few times earlier at his home in San Francisco, and he was always a gentleman. This made it easy to approach him about the project, and when I called him on the phone, I was right. Not only was he kind, he was genuinely enthusiastic about writing a poem for Johnny & Giselle, and, just a few days later, he called me and said it was finished.
I printed up a hundred or so and handed them out to the guests at the reception.
Johnny Marries Giselle
I
it’s a wonder
like grass, the glass
in that music, brittle
steel, strong
silence pushing a man
through print
into light, the marriage
of spirit and
soul, the union
of imagination and
mind, the rooms
two will find
together and those
that remain
locked in one set of eye
II
“…the marriage
of true minds…” how
we read ourselves and bend fog
backward and dream
waves, arm in
hand, lip to lip, hand in
the sky, till we bend
to our twin reflections and
never do anything but live
Neeli Cherkovski
2 May 1998
