A response to Michelangelo’s "La pietà"
Mary numbered the fingers on His grabby hands
and pretended to nibble His ten chubby toes
and traced over His smooth and still blemishless brow
and attacked His round tummy with kisses and squeals
and raised up her own voice to create lullabies
to the beat of the ebb and the flow of His heart
to the beat of the ebb and the flow of our hope.
Mary cooed at each hiccup that tickled His throat and
ensconced Him in swaddling clothes soft to His skin
and made haste to attend to His wailing for milk and
caressed each pink cheek as she rocked Him to sleep
and withheld her own breath as she listened with awe
to the falling and rising again of His lungs
to the falling and rising again of our hope.