Pieta

On this shaven hill,
suspended between death and something after,
I watched the empty purse that was my body
as they cut it from the cross.


You were there beneath it,
though you couldn’t stand and they sat you in the shade
of that unnatural tree. You took my mass of limbs
upon your lap and rocked it


as though I were your child again.
You cried a cradle song: a lullaby to wash away
the blood and dirt, while the wound at my side
kissed a stain into your gown.


This poem first appeared in an online suppliment to Agenda.