Mary Meets Jesus on the Way of the Cross

“And there followed Him a great multitude of people, and of women, who bewailed and lamented him.” Lk 23:27

When he was not yet two, he hurt himself.
He found his father’s bench, climbed up the rail,
and reaching for a hammer on the shelf,
he pricked his finger on a sharpened nail—
and cried out. Holding him, I was dismayed
to see four beads of blood fall to the ground.
Between torment and love, my spirit swayed.
Each drop looked like a red rose petal— round
and bright. This, just his first wound, still I longed
to gather every floret of his pain
because it was a part of him, belonged
inside the reliquary of his veins
or washed by God-sent rain or shared, adored.
In each drop was an endless vineyard stored.

In each drop was an endless vineyard stored.
And as he staggered toward me with the cross,
seeing his gaping wounds, the blood that poured,
hearing the women wailing for my loss,
my heart quickened and opened like a rose
in torment and in love, to take each thorn
they crowned him with into myself— enclose
each trace of lost blood, pain. Since he was born,
I knew this day would come. I didn’t know
that as our eyes met, I would see the child
that he had been, those many years ago.
I tell you, as he caught my eyes, he smiled—
through pain, to comfort me. His march resumed—
and each red drop he shed anointed, bloomed.

—Annabelle Moseley
first appeared in Dappled Things; also published in the anthology Adam, Eve & The Riders of the Apocalypse