Our Lady of Ash Wednesday
       

A third virgin carved from horn and
this horn slowly beginning to branch
upward into the night like sad
quiet lightning? Mary, Saint, morning, noon
and eve, you yet conceive
the soil on which afterbirths are flung
with what is pulled between her legs
her thighs and his hands and
your hands and my body
before the livestock's impassive eyes
Splinter of terror, splinter of awe—Mary, Saint
Shake me useless

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Copyright © 2013 Joe Hall All rights reserved
from The Devotional Poems
Black Ocean
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission