Triptych of Woman
Triptych of Woman
Mary Kate Conner
I. Eve
Tell me, Poet, of the heritage of this heart --
For I have only just been wakened to the shining newness round about me;
and as you watch me wander, wondering at wisps of cloud and drops of dew,
intuiting the twists of branches and bowing to red-breasted robins,
in your every stream and river and raindrop,
I am baptized into your mystery.
And your reply comes to me as simple as song, that song which is the sound of the Word
walking in the cool of the day --
“You are altogether beautiful, My Love, there is no flaw in you!”
O, what origin! What miracle, the beauty of my dignity, destined as a Daughter for eternity!
Yet, lo -- who is this One who now so still and softly slumbers?
II. Magdalene
What sacred silence fills the space where He once so softly slumbered -- And is this now the
tomb of all my aching dreams, O Rabbi?
Or do I yet gaze with tremulous hope upon some womb of new beginnings?
Suddenly, as if stumbling upon some banquet of the senses, my grief is filled with this Other,
pierced through by the beauty of your person, caught up as if your gaze might create me again.
And the Word has a new sound and new form and the Word speaks --
“Mary!”
With my face in the earth, I see again such blessed feet once bathed in the oil of my tears --
which I would now shower like dew with my kisses but for your whisper:
“Go tell my brothers, my sister, my bride.”
And with what effortlessness I am now rising as my very being becomes longing...
III. Assumption
At long last, like a sigh, I am consumed by longing itself,
assumed into the fullness of the furnace of fiery love,
my every thirst now sated by the living waters of Your pierced side
which I now enter for eternity.
Gone are the days of my Nazarene innocence,
when I first knew you in my womb.
And like the virgin tomb I laid you in, adorned with nard and spice,
you now break upon me singing:
“New life! New life! New life!”
My labor pains suspend in glory as you bring to birth each soul within me;
my motherhood in fullness blooms as I prepare,
with ineffable tenderness,
each bed in the Father’s house,
delighting to design in heaven as on earth
their place in the divine destiny.
Mary Kate Conner
Poet
Mary Kate is an occasional freelance writer and aspiring religious sister in a new community in Colorado. This is her first poetry publication.
Photography by Feyza Yıldırım