Song Of The Unborn Child

(The following doesn't promote anti-abortion sentiments
but protests orthodox Christianity's 'abortion' of a legend about Yeshua's marriage to / child
by Mary Magdalene while commemorating statues of The Black Madonna)

I had an affair with the Virgin Mary
and left her that way,
legs crossed - emblematic of a killing tree -
haunting our footsteps into the shadows
guarding The Palace of Dreams,
her hands reaching for the fabric, the texture of dawn,
clutching, milking the teats of mother goats
on the empty hills,
the sun scorching her hair into threads of black
beneath the nexus of crossed darkness,
“My name is Mary,
What does it mean?” she asked,
“Peace, I think,” I said,
“I feel the hunger of the waiting many
reaching through his arms,
their pain through
his hands and feet - do they know
what they want?”
“Peace, hope, a chance to live and love a little,” I responded,
“Yes, so speaks my heart” - she fixed me with her eyes,
and mine followed her steps back through the goats,
bending to wrench wormwood from the soil,
her lips caressing its liquid essence
for a heroic, hallucinogenic spinning
of fantastic myths and tales
swirling around his head,
“They were cruel,
not allowing us the baby we so wanted,
Yet, the sand so accepting of his feet
before They raised him up” - her whisper
dissolved in her moment of transfiguration,
etched in stone, black image on distant, rolling plains,
At loss for words
I stroked her marble hair and face - as cool or warm
as the touch of my grieving hands,
while unheeding,
a parade of monarchs, nobility and soldiers
marched past in the full regalia of war,
peasants quietly bent beneath their toil
in fields of waving grain,
struck heat-tortured sparks from anvils with hammers of iron,
Ecclesiastical judgements denounced her as unrighteous,
ridiculed her wisdom,
while grandmothers, mothers and daughters
came in secret
to worship Mother Mary, Goddess Earth, The Black Madonna
before her stone-armed cradle
as empires, states, dictatorships and democracies
rose and fell around her watch
beneath my caresses, until I turned back through the goats,
afraid to wrench wormwood
from between the rocks as she once had,
heart heavy for the moment of his sorrow,
pondering silly answers
seemingly without reasoned questions,
remembering the one I’d loved
and left a virgin
in the stone-embraced emptiness of her heart
for the Child they wouldn’t let us have.

Still, her eyes look across the distant plains,
caressing the silence of the air
with the meanings of her names: Peace, love, hope,
The Black Madonna
and my once and still-loved Mary Magdalene.