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Mary speaks of how it feels when the baby turns

As if he’s a fish alive in the sea.
I am ocean.
As if he’s a hand stirring water and grain.
I am what will rise in time.
As if he’s a tongue rolling around honey and sour.
I am fruit.
As though a stormcloud boiled the sky.
I am sky.
As though a skin of wine sloshed in a servant’s arms.
I am servant.
He rolls beneath my husband’s hands as though he is curious,
as though he is leviathan near breaching the waters.
Still, I am sea.
As sprouts pushing against earth, toward sun.
I am field.

Advent

Around December first, the summer people
All have gone. Some had stayed to see the fall
And some for hunting season—all have gone.

We walk deserted roads. The first snows came
But dried away to traces in the ditch
And snowy patches on the forest floor.

In town the Christmas lights are blinking bright,
The tourists few. The locals are subdued,
At peace with what some still call Advent time.

It’s dark by four. We light a fireplace fire.
We have a drink and share a meal and read
Until it’s time to go to early bed.

Again

          After each daily death come flurries of
resurrections.                 One night, a swallowtail
saved a lackluster dream;  later, on rough
terrain, absent all sprig, what tipped the scale

was a willful warbler.           Today, assail-
ing winds and mushroom-fog conquer the hour

The physicist and the theologian

Today a black hole swallowed Stephen Hawking.
By quark of fate or faith, infinity
Ago, I stood a Cambridge student gawking
As he rolled past me into Trinity.
Eternal verities awaited me
Across St. John’s Street where my grad advisor
Dispensed divine research advice; whilst he,
The famous physicist, a quantum wiser,
Nudged joystick left, chose Newton over Knox;
What cosmic irony for us to place
His ashes in a dark Westminster box
Instead of shooting them out into space.