The bride’s gown

(For Christina Rossetti)
Once there was a bride who lost her groom.
Fleeing the church she ran straight into the arms of another man
‘Child’, he said, ‘What is the matter?’
‘I’ve been abandoned!’, she cried, ‘Now I shall never be married!’
‘Then I shall tell you a story’, said the man
‘No-one can help me now’, wept the bride.
And so he began:
Once (he said) there was a bride who, on the morning of her wedding, lost her gown
‘Go to the water’s edge’, they told her, ‘The ocean will stitch you another.’
So she ran to the shore where each wave spread a different lace at her feet.
‘Which one is yours?’, announced the ocean.
The bride could not answer, for she wept to see so much beauty And by all these laces, she realised
She was already married.
…And the first bride must have wept too, and smiled
For I happen to know she married the second man
The very next day.