Ecce Ancilla Domini

(After the painting of the same name by Dante Gabriel Rossetti–Behold the Handmaid of the Lord)

This girl cringes on her pallet
from the sight of an angel
standing in her bedroom
with fire at his feet.

She draws back against the wall
as if it were a blanket she wraps
around her thin body to hide.
She does not meet this angel’s eyes.
Instead, she cowers from the lily stalk
he holds before him like a stick
as if to beat her down with purity.

Or is she drawing back in thought
against this wall in her house of self
to recite the words, lovingly stroking
the iambs and anapests of heartbeat
cadencing in her belly as she waits upon
the language that will enflesh the wind?

Or is she distracted by the flames
this angel seems to tread
from far-off hope to promise,
a path of fire that leads
through gateways of dream  
past synapses of mind
to a conception of hearts?

Perhaps, she is not trying
at all to articulate the ineffable.
I think this Mary will practice
practical mystery as, half-asleep,
she rummages through her mother’s
store of medicines for salve to ease
the burning mission in Gabriel’s toes.
She’ll move to sooth the pain of angels first
before she folds that baby’s wails in her arms,
and, to make the world all better,
kisses the boo-boo’d finger of God.

-Kitty Yanson