Time opened like a drape.
Like rain suddenly ended.
Life, a radiant thread
woven into dawn.
A beginning,
such as no beginning.
Before a name,
given to day and night
Valleys being flooded.
Reaching of the sea.
Peeking mermaids, vanishing.
Birth time.
The end of infinity.
Love, the flash of forever,
coming and going.
It is you, Mary!
The apple of an orchard,
harvest of life itself.
Baskets of running and shouting,
thinking and saying,
stories beyond all forgetting.
Gold and iron,
a million times a million smiles,
tears,
poems,
touchings.
So much you
that God hangs pictures in heaven
saying,
she’s just begun,
Happy Birthday, Mary!