Rats at the Wedding

 by Brett Rutherford

Part Two of "A Northumbrian Wedding"

I have come
for the Robson-Rutherford wedding.
The inn’s last room is mine,
secured by my distant-cousin status.
My room overlooks the Tyne.
The castle beyond is all a-stir,
the grand hall packed with visitors.

Yet the old keep and its twisted turret
is barred and closed.
     Lord Rutherford forbids
the tread of curious idlers
upon its steep unbannistered steps,
windows unpaned; uneven-floored
the crenellated tower-top is, where
one might plummet to the very dungeon.

I pass a train depot and shelter
whose sign points out
the way to London, Edinburgh,
Paris, and Rome, though no one
seems to come or go
by either train or autobus. Indeed,
a colony of wharf-rats, obscenely fat
have taken residence on every bench
and nest in piles of yellow ticket stubs.

“Don’t mind them,” Lady Robson advises.
“As she is marrying an American,
the silly creature, we’ve drawn the rats.
Off to New York they go, and not
a moment too soon for Northumberland.”
This is an elder lady’s fantasy, I guess.

How such a Pied-Piper feat could be
accomplished was beyond my figuring.

Assuredly the rats are here for cake,
like all the distant relatives come on
with smiling insincerity and gifts
(white elephants that rotate fete to fete).

Rats, rice, and diamonds, the stuff
of weddings since ancient times.