from Quattro Marias by Karen Dubert

I am happy to share the poetry of my gifted sister-in-law. Follow her blog at www.kareninq.blogspot.com

There at His death:


Caught in a splintered second of eternity while
years stretched out—spokes of a fiery wheel—and she is immobile.
Her tears the stained-glass fragments
of a still-life witness.

Trapped in a gruesome drama on a shame-filled hill:
incomprehensions' disbelief aghast
at this muddy turn of things.
(what treasure worth this dread price?)

There at His birth:

The surreal after-birth lightness in a stable
must have portended the most unexpected
of the shepherd-worshipped Child,
warned you by prescient pain of

Grim pre-death nightness of exile
from heaven. Most unexpected, indeed—
and fiercer than the spikes in His hands
is the Sword in your heart.

at birth, your babe
at death, world's Savior