Incarnation

Every quark of marrow

           sings to a star

     about some incomprehensible

           connection

between pain and beauty.

     Angels cock

             their heads, perplexed

and ever so sweetly

      troubled

             by the music

emitted from your nuclei.

      Something about your

               gravity and grief

gives them

       courage. They long

to clothe themselves in bone,

            the very stuff that

      weighs you down

to the mother

           of bodies,

      this planet, pulsing

with silverfish and sweet grass,

               empty park

      benches and

               lonely faces

of dissolving frost

     on fallen maple leaves.

                    All Gods yearn

     to fathom the opacity 
of your tears 
          and smother their
     brilliant souls
                  in dust.

 Painting: detail from Raphael's Sistene Madonna