We stopped on the steps
of city hall holding hands
when the protestors chanted
and stood their ground
for the impoverished homeless
who freeze to death
on January nights
because politics ignore them.
We paused a moment
before heading in
for our license to love
and then moved past the spectacle
looking back over our shoulders
at a man in black;
he was shouting,
pounding on a brown coffin
he had wheeled up onto the steps.
In seven months he'll marry us.