The Zephyr Gets Married!

Though many people thought that pigs would fly before my husband married, Jim and I tied the knot on October 1st, surrounded by our nearest and dearest friends and family.  It was a warm and breezy day at our favorite little chapel on the western Great Plains where we made our vows.
Pastor Don Falke, a good friend and former Moab resident, performed the ceremony.  Jim’s good friend John Wringe flew from Australia to be his Best Man and my dear friend Sara Frieberg and my sister Jenni stood by my side. Michael Brohm, who also took the incredible “Portraits from Perm” in this issue of The Zephyr, traveled from Louisville, Kentucky, to shoot our wedding pictures
It was, without a doubt, the most profound experience of our lives. And so we want to share some of that ceremony with you, spoken so beautifully in Don’s Texas drawl.

   – Tonya Stiles

And one postscript—Jim promises not to let profound happiness and good cheer affect the cantankerous and controversial aspects of The Zephyr…We’ll see.

I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep…

Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to…

I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy–and this poem,
no more mine than any man’s who has loved a woman.

To read the PDF version of this article, click HERE

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