Imagine Mary’s Breasts

Mary’s Breasts

Imagine Mary’s breasts,
warm brown as the earth
pale gold as the moon,
the breasts of a young girl
ripe as perfect plums.

Imagine the angel who came to her – blinding!
How beneath her breasts her heart opened like a mouth
to receive the host,
how her belly nest-like
encircled the seed.

Imagine how she labored
and how they lay, wet and spent,
against each other’s skin,
how mouth and tiny hands reached for the milk taut breasts
for the sweet purpled nipple.

Imagine how in all the years that followed,
there in the pocket of her heart
she knew what was to come.
See her before the cross,
how her breast split open like the sky
and left a wound where her heart had been.

Imagine Mary’s breasts
how they are like your own.
How beneath them your heart
must open to receive the terrible gift of love,
how you must nurture the child within your own darkness
bringing forth in travail.

See how you must feed the least
with milk of kindness.
Imagine in the end
how your breast will be rent,
how love’s wound will consume you.

— Paula Lippard Justice, 2013
Recorded Quaker minister and professor