Corpus Christi

1.

There was a day like this in my infancy
When asleep in your pulsing womb I was shocked awake.

All of a sudden full grown and sorely groomed for an escape,
That cold departure from your warmth
Which alchemized for nine long months my small frame
Into muscle and skin and light, subtle
Like the last glowing vestiges of a fading California sun.

2.

I never knew I could speak
—with the wholly naked command of a sincere prayer—
Something so inborn as that deep jolt, electric with the joy of surprise
At separating into a new and different birth
Emerging with tears for dear life at those shooting pains
That’ve shaped us as an artist would with chisel to stone
Into this quiet moment, cut
In smooth, manteling curves of maternal love
Sculpted soft like a living Pieta.

3.

You’ll miss me when I’m gone, wandering on,
My back casting a long, cruciform shadow across your windows.
Wandering off if only to return with a lifetime spent scribbling
A million frenzied thoughts composed in bloody prose.

And when Calvary’s reached its longed-for peak
I’ll leave the moon to its ocean-bidding in big, swooshing gusts of high tide,
Alone. Without haste, I’ll make my slow way back home
To rope my two arms around your little warm body, worn,
Though willed strong enough to hold me up while I pull you in
To shoulder my head and rest my heart
As it beats its blood through arteries full of ache
That has this son still calling Mom—
Always in the dark.