Ave Maris Stella

For Msgr. Joseph P. Lehman  Ave maris stella

 we sang in the night

 the night of the day

 we learned of your death

 Hail Mary, star of the sea

 sea star, shimmering

 electric peach, slick and muscular

 among the green braids of kelp

 clinging to the crags,

 to the flinted, wave-weary shore

 Solve vincla reis

 we sang, while the waves rocked

 while she rocked us in our cradle

 wet with comfort’s inhaled tears

 moist with lullaby

 swaddled in sound, in cloth and sea milk

 nourishing mother of God

 we swim on the lips

 of a perilous, liquid cavern

 teeter at the abyss

 above the tumult   and trembling depths

 at the raw precipice of despair

 wrapped, entombed in linen

 tossed over vast and turbulent waters

 we grasp tightly to our minds

 lest they wander, wandering deep   to hollows of sand and basalt  to bottomless swells of grief  swift currents of terror

 shrouding what lurks

 in the dim leagues of sinking coldness

 Profer lumen cæcis

 warm of heart, soft of word,   young in spirit you were

 although your thin, brave body was not

 as a child, already devout and dark-eyed,

 did the night awaken you   with its black fingers

 soaking you with its damp terrors

 did your little limbs quiver

 with sweating shrieks

 caught in the ebony crevices of dream

 pursued by the whale, the squid,

 the unnamed, tentacled creatures

 grasping you by elbow, by knee

 pulling you down   to the swirling depths?

 Monstra te esse matrem

 when you lay alone in your hospital bed

 under fluorescent lights

 in the white, antiseptic room

 amid beeps and buzzes  of machines, lab coats,   and ominous clipboards

 did you open your senses,

 make an offering of your eyes, your ears,

 drink in wafts of salt-thickened air?

 feel the rush of waves,

 the sea’s roar   giving way to melody?

 Iter para tutum

 did you discern the voice of Mary:

 ethereal, like a mermaid,

 did you follow her willingly

 calling you down

 through that place

 dark, wet, and churning?