Ecce Ancilla Domini!
after Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Annunciation SOURCE

I hear the alarum coos of doves
at my window.  I cast away
nights weight to see
a man beside my bed.
He isn't varnished, like my husband,
but full of boyhood sunshine.

He is a wingless angel
whose muscles are made of light
and shadow. His swelling gradations peak
from beneath his unsown robe - -
a glimpse of thigh, of hip.

I am afraid to look through the folds,
to find Joseph's grainy lines incomparable,
and avert my eyes to the flaming floor.
The red-licks engulf my angel's skin
Without scalding.

My flesh is also impermeable, he says,
my gown can be muddied by pilgrimage
sands, and my hair needled with hay,
but I'll remain unscathed.  My soul will stay
as white as this bridal bed.  Not even Joseph
will notice I've been changed, at first.

The angel tells me he is God's love,
and that God needs to love me.

He offers lilies into my timid hand,
And his eyes are as stormy as Galilee,
I begin to fear him, and the swollen
belly awkwardness that will send Joseph
out to the mountains for wood, chopping
the logs by the proportions of his disgust,
his betrayal, his anger as God's cuckold.
But the chiaroscuro guides my eye
and the flames are rising higher.  My frightened
hand wraps tightly around the lily-stems,
and I let the angel ascend.

Joseph will tell me he wants to love me,
and I will have to tell him I have already been loved.

© S.J. Chambers