The Mary

A Poem by Mary Jo Bang

Fully awake but God only knows what she's thinking. 
The baby's dressed, sure, but in a wrap 
that looks like a Roman toga gone wrong. 

The baby's fleshy neck suggests a congenital goiter, 
the result of an inborn error. It's not unlike 
the butterfly the baby is pinching, in that it was once 

something else—a cocoon-concealed about-to-be, 
an anomaly. The future is already formed. 
She’s waiting to find herself in it. Maybe 

she's thinking, don't look back, don't look forward. 
Good luck with that. She's no Buddha. 
The Buddha is dead. The thing she must know is this—

you can pray all you want. Maybe she is 
praying, in vain, for a plot twist to get her out of this.

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Virgin and Child, follower of Rogier van der Weyden, ca. 1470–75