The Child Messiah

In a diaspora a bride is kneeling. Red needled
Rhine roses, white flowering, and rowan
embower her, worming

methodically, Gothically. Butter-colored
berries penciled in viridian wreathe her
hair, coiled to the hollow
of an immaculate breast. Within
that maw of two, unfinished
hands, a messiah begins.

His back is spotted with gold,
his fingers are filigree born from her body,
his lips love the timbre of her
nipples, and his belly is full of her.



One wind-reduced tree appeals the windless face
of the bald blue Father and his bearding
Son, swathed in crinoline

and icing winged. She molds the boy
beneath this tree.



Now the woman rises slender backed and silver
chested. She faces her discontent,
and Canaan becomes
dust.
The child faces the water.
The other shore, she assures him, will be
the same: the same white
grass, the same wild rowan and glass blue
sky, leaves sanctuary clean and gray, green
as dull, blunted blades.
Look-- There are no shadows
on the river, no serrated fingers
where blue fish feed.
But I am free, he coils.
I am twenty-four and I am free.
I could go anywhere from here,

his wrist flies and
flails. Dust-colored
magi smile, sucking
marrow and bits of roasted skin
from wings. Reliquary
wrist, the lampblack decree.



One woman of successive faces
appeals this bearded son.

Each holds the boy beneath her
tree.
He must birth pomegranates and violets and
all things green and unraveling.
He must abandon his granite
patrimony and attend her
shadows with the unfailing
furrows and arrows of a father.
And there will be nights he must
attend alone;

but his lips love the timbre of her nipples as her hair
plays upon the sky a promise
of wings.



The Child Messiah [#36]
© 2009 Fammerée


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Richard Fammerée
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org


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