Magnificat

by Maria Berardi

These are the delights of being aligned with God. In your newborn's slow. helpless dance, you see what you sensed all those months: the reality of pregnancy's metaphor: darkness tumbles into fact. The child's small parts are delectable. In only one other interaction Does the mouth supercede the fingers so, and the nose ferrets out the richest gulleys: the crook of the neck, around the ears, the emanation of a pure new body ("baby's breath" flowers are the symbol of a scent, synesthesia spangled in a small white galaxy). Your eyes undulate, a new umbilical cord: to observe is to embrace, to enumerate is to exult, to gaze is to be astounded into your proper place: through you but not of you has this being bloomed, you have no thought more elegant than the fine bright point of his eye. You are humbled, ripped, transfigured; pleased to be water, succor for this tree.