Star

Each day this week, I’ll be sharing from a series of five Advent poems I wrote for John Knox Presbyterian Church in Seattle. I hope they will bless you as you prepare for the coming of Christmas.

Star

“A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon  under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.”  -Revelation 12:1

“…keep warm this small hot naked star/ fallen into my arms.” -Luci Shaw, “Mary’s Song”

After the angel dissolved, I stood among the skies,
no longer dressed in brown linen, but with fire:
the sun’s silk my gown. I leaned into the swirl of gold and lit.

Have I created my Creator?

My mother clucks her tongue. Questions, she says,
cause confusion. She could never hold what I saw:

the crown upon this plain brown head,
twelve stars in motion, set spinning like a child’s toy,
and rushing towards me, flames in its wake, blazed
the greater star, its hot white orb.

Should I tell you it entered me, how the warm simmer settled?

When I woke to this dirt floor, my mother’s voice
in the next room, issuing me out the door,
I ran my hands down my belly,
knew what is real is the crown, not the dirt.

Later, when the nausea came, when the accusations
birthed, when all those I loved turned enemies,
I would stand in the garden, arms raised,
close my eyes and feel the spinning crown encircling,
feel this star descending into human form.