Poem: Week 1 - Star

Star


"A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head."

-Revelation 12:1


"...keep warm this small hot naked star/ fallen into my arms."

-Lucy Shaw, "Mary's Song"



After the angel dissolved, I stood among the skies,

no longer dressed in brown linen, but with fire:

the sun's silk my gown. I leaned into the swirl of gold and lit.


Have I created my Creator?


My mother clucks her tongue. Questions, she says,

cause confusion. She could never hold what I saw:


the crown upon this plain brown head,

twelve stars in motion, set spinning like a child's toy,

and rushing towards me, flames in its wake, blazed

the greater star, its hot white orb.


Should I tell you it entered me, how the warm simmer settled?


When I woke to this dirt floor, my mother's voice

in the next room, issuing me out the door,

I ran my hands down my belly,

knew what is real is the crown, not the dirt.


Later, when the nausea came, when the accusations

birthed, when all those I loved turned enemies,

I would stand in the garden, arms raised,

close my eyes and feel the spinning crown encircling,

feel this star descending into human form.