How Will You Know Her?

Between heartbeats is a garden, the place where Magdalene
and Jesus touch. She thinks he is the gardener. He thinks She is
the breath of God, caressing his chest. And she is.

Between heartbeats is a garden, the wilderness where Israel
meets Wisdom, that Sabbath Queen who sings of loss.
How could they make love in the desert?
They pitched a tent of animal skins, and it became
a holy pavilion of gathered silences.

Between heartbeats is a garden, where village girls dance
with the Prince of Herdsmen. Each maiden is his flute,
but only one can be his Song.

If she who wears your respiration as her wedding gown

does not wound your artery, here, in the throat,
how will you know her? By what signs will you prove
that the Paramour is your Betrothed?

Dear friend, your emptiness turns indigo, fragrant as jasmine.
Your numb places overflow like awakening breasts.

There is a bruise in your crown that never quite heals,
and when you breathe through it, your bones fill up
with orphaned lightning.

One grail breaks against another, mingling the tinctures
of birth and death. Now you are a vineyard fallowing wild,
edges un-plucked, where wandering pilgrims eat their fill.

All night some feral goddess presses her kiss of solitude

between your eyebrows, a dreamless throbbing pearl.

A waveless flame on the wick of your spine consumes
the sky-blue oil of wonder, whose scent is love.

In the darkest hour you cease to ask for light,
because the midnight stillness under your breastbone
has become a maelstrom of stars.
You remember that this smoldering in your soul
is your body, and the dignity of this inhalation,
how it gently places the spirit in each cell of your flesh,

is your Lover’s secret name.

Boreas, Goddess of Wind, by John William Watherhouse