Alien Child

Beholding the baby, you could not see yourself

in him. He had his mother's flesh and form, but none

of you: a hybrid of your wife plus something else,

something indecipherable that struck you dumb.

And as he grew, his face grew more foreign to you:

inexplicable expressions, pure smiles, pure frowns,

eyes imbibing all things, as if visiting new

planets in each poor corner of his run-down town.

And as he grew, his faith grew more native in you:

you found comfort in his otherness, in this cross

between your woman and her lover—now in view

as your love too—and in his freedom from your flaws.

To the Blessed Mother

I. To the Mother in the Manger

Did the very air vibrate,

humming in the humid space

soaked in the Holy Ghost?

Did the sky push down on

you, heavy with the host

of heaven’s angels?

And did you feel the heat

as you were caught in the cross-

fire of God’s gaze on God?

II. To the Mother at the Cross

When the cross’s splinters stabbed your heart,

did you feel space unravel and rip

like the temple veil tearing apart?

When you knelt at the event horizon,

did the hole in heaven suck out the light

as the piercing wind was rising?

And when you saw the wound in space-time weep,

did time rewind, the cross now a cradle

where your baby cries himself to sleep?

III. To the Mother at Pentecost (Pentecost by Jean II Restout)

As the men cower beneath the burning shower,

you appear at peace; your smile seems to greet the fire

not as pain and napalm, but as a dear old friend,

as the heated spirit who came so long ago

and softly kissed you on that cool Nazarene night,

letting you wear his shadow like the warmest shawl.

Yet he knew you even within the silent womb

that swaddled you, when he suffused you cell by cell

and whispered purity into your brand-new blood.