Annunciation

A poem for the feast

The Birth of Venus, Odilon Redon

Annunciation!
	A glorious day for salmon
which we exalt and slice like circumcision,
life given back to life.

			The vestments are blue—
fairy-fractal flame-blue,
					dawn-blue of the endless
taking its slow walk as if the earth were a garden

	and so it is,
despite our raiments and deeds,
our naive concepts
			       like “mine.”

Never was there a feast that declared “mine,”
not a single religion.
			They all dream annunciation,
day of days
		bucketful of stars.

The sun is golden-white and silver today
and dawn is cold.

Let me be a virgin girl for a moment
so I can know the depths,
					how far the fullness goes—
abyss empty waiting goodness
						      that is a womb,

for a moment let me feel how far those depths,
garden hidden under earth.