The Bride

She was spun from the night-fog
that rises soft from the day-earth heat.

She was tender,
and she was wild,
and she walked with the cadence
of a mother ascending the stair.

Her hair was the first laughter of babies,
and the pretty whites of her inner arms
were woven from family stories
and sweet old songs.

Her high cheeks burned
with the exhalations
of lovers sleeping intertwined;

and the bottoms of her feet
could not impress the grasses on which they trod
for her soles were formed
from the shouts of sons returning home from war.

I watched as she knelt and collected unto herself
every orphan in all the world.

So many million gentle lights,
buoyant and tumbling in the dark,

I held my breath
and I shut my eyes
because it was a sight too terrible
and too wonderful.

When I opened them,
I saw every lost child
collected into an orb
weightless
brilliant and perfect,
delicate and hovering,
white like a summer dandelion.

Her lips parted
and she blew maternity
into the center of them.
It was a lullaby
and it was a hymn.

The children lifted.

They rose into the sky
sighing on the fullness of her love
where they became glorious,
named,
intentional,
settled like stars.