Anne: The Coming of the Immaculate

At times prayer is wordless, but it fills

the empty night as water fills a lake

with its own meaning. I pray to break

this body with a child, for my taut pelvis

to open and ache its tight basketwork

apart; to yield. Sometimes I sense God

in the darkness—like a heavy leaning

at the door—always with an inexplicable

tenderness in how he does not burst in.

Perhaps he would break me if he did,

so waits instead to pour into my own undoing—

so just when I would moan, It’s done!

that life did not go well, Perfection rests in me,

and I expand, like wood ticking in the sun.

​

from "Dawn of this Hunger", Second Spring 2019