(for my Mary)

Amid the floodlike debris of divorce,
the delirium which follows destruction
of the only world one has known, long I lay
exhausted with sodden spirit, wondering
why the Lord of hosts, allegedly omnipresent,
was nowhere near when I needed Him most.

At last at a rising of the sun,
I recalled His compassion for the crew
of Noah’s ark, who in surviving the Flood
feared another, and considered His colorful
promise to spare their descendants
from such a painful fate ever again.

In a wretched state of weakened faith
and needy flesh, seeking more than reminder
of ancient lore, I asked for a sign
for myself and fell asleep, dreaming then
of a rainbow seeming to arch over
an answer, a form too far away to identify.

Awakening, I abided the actualization
of that sweet dream, watching the sun
routinely rise and set a thousand times
while waiting to see whose face
would come into focus, waiting while
its bearer grew from beauty to beauty.

Today, far away from those floodplains
of past adversity, I disembark from the ark.
My odyssey is over. I have come home
to find the face is yours and you,
like Noah’s returning dove, promising love.
Redeemed, I relish the irony of your being:

Namesake of the Mother of God.