Homage to Mary Magdalene

When you met
Our Blessed Mother
Her beauty must have
Brought you to your knees
Stripped bare like a tree
Blown by ruthless winter winds
To rise again
Your worldly appearances
No longer left intact
Those devils that fill
Our human frames
Sent packing by
Tears of repentance
Washing the feet of holiness.

You were surely the black
Sheep of your family
A deadly trap for
Foolish ways
Facing into your public
Humiliation overcome with love
Pouring ointment where
Indifference and neglect
Looked the other way
The tension between you
And the traitor who
Held the purse strings
Palpable down through time
As you felt the
Angry tides coming
For Him you loved.

At the foot of the
Most frightful event
In history
Forged in a fire I
Can only be a pauper's share
You took your place
In the new beginning
With Mary and the
Beloved young man
There at the foot of
Salvation.

It was your privilege
Sent into the garden that early morn
Carrying spices in your sorrow
Salve for the wounds of
Death now gone from the tomb
Stolen from your eyes
Unable to recognize the form
Gracing the garden
Only your ears caught the truth
His voice
Resounding glorified
As you in homage kissed
The pierced feet
Afraid to lose Him
Once again
But He would stay awhile
He said, no need to
Be afraid.

Your reputation down
Through the ages
Lies buried in mystery
Your last years spent in prayer
Nursing the tiny shoot
Planted with such loving cost
In time
With the beloved young man
You bid farewell
Unto heaven's gate she whose
Beauty first stayed your
Searching soul
Sustaining you always within her
Tenderness
Gone forward into glory
Her son's Spirit the fiery life now
Burning in your beating heart.