Magnificat
By Michael Angel Martin - Miami, Florida, USA - 1 March 2017
My soul doth magnify
the matrons of Palm Sunday.
Mothers sitting long after Mass
tying palm leaflets into crosses
sized for shirt pockets. Mothers up
to the same old prayerful weaving
of green fingers for the Lord,
and His Mother, that miracle,
who, despite it all, never hardened.
Mothers up to the same old prayerful
weaving of green fingers to cast
upon their earthly mothers, too,
who lay hardened now
in the hard earth.
My soul doth magnify
the swift fastening of sacred hearts
to these flimsy roods with spare reeds.
And this they do for lost letters,
their livers, lost homelands, old lovers,
for mothers of other names: widows,
sexworkers, the surrogate, the barren,
spinsters, mistresses, the post-op,
the cloistered, the jailed, the palsied,
nurses, and the secretly ordained.
And lastly, we penitents, lined up
at our mothers’ mercy, blessed
leaves cowering in our hands.