Two Poems

Monologue of the Magdalene

I am not myself, I am my sisters,
yet not utterly, I am their unbound hair
in hands which, resettling it not after love
but recognition, not after tented
tastings and feedings, but after gazing
to the garden's end bringing
lightnings, lifted and were gone.

Thus, though she only
set kasha and the wine,
and then stood with back turned in the pantry
while the two men grew quiet
as the third one, the hooded stranger, gathered
them and time and blood's beat
                               and her also
into his low speaking, I held her
...