BORN OF MARY

BORN OF MARY

God’s words threaded her ear bones,

intricate as a folk tale journey;

God’s Word in embryo – alive

in her womb.  Everything made him:

soil her sandals slapped, water,

mix of sunlight, dusk, strength, fear.

Honey, fish, bread, memories.  Fear

and desire interlock in women whose bones

are supple with life.  Even well-water

Mary looked into held the nine-month journey

He was making.  Everything verified him.

The wholeness of her brought Him alive.

He came.  Helpless.  Small collarbone alive

as his eyes.  O his hunger.  His fear –

how she felt it.  When she nursed him,

the pull and suck of his mouth, the tiny bones

of maleness astonished her prayer.  His journey

into time – absurd, boyish – held off the water

of any red sea from her passage.  Other water.

wakening as dawn, called muteness alive

in its blessing.  The twelfth year: a journey

she made with him.  In Jerusalem, her fear,

intuïtion, epiphany among black-lettered bones

of ancient script promised her for him

that his bones would rise.  Broken, rise. In him,

prophecy would melt all rotting ice to water,

water release hosanna-song, song be wish bones

of man’s desire.  That was promised.  But, alive

and tossed as cattail or bulrush, fear

and faith wrestled – circling her journey.

Thirty years – not much of a journey

thirty to thirty-three – lifetime to him.

and to her – a following.  She swallowed fear

like wayside dust.  Drank his words like water.

and waited.  And waited on him, alive

but almost ready the numbering of his bones.

Bones of mystery: she who humanly made him

life-giving as water, gives him to us forever alive:

balm for fear, healing way for the journey

Sister Maura SSND

America.  24 December 1977

Used with permission