worship
though it’s embarrassing,
like talking in one’s sleep
or feeling milk chortle out the nose.
it is unseemly, the amnesia of the self,
the adoration unto death, the testimony,
against the evidence, that there is
only
this:

the beloved
addressing her:
be loved,
as i am.
you cradle me, but it is i who will
save you, gather you back
from the
abyss;

with a
pair of eyes studying her face, with
her palm cooling the fevered brow,
with humming, light as angels; with her arm,
taut beneath a small body; with an ever-deepening night,
with all the time in the world,
with a
kiss.



A work in progress.

"Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss."
-In the Bleak Midwinter