Ode to my Son’s Birthmark

Stork bite, angel kiss, salmon patch
of blush epidermis, pink palm print
pressed to the back of your head
& hidden until you merged
with the light outside my insides,
summer flooding the hospital room
in the city of Saint Monica, patron
of mothers & famous for cheering
son Augustine along his fraught
illustrious path & isn’t the world
just like that? Mothers versus Death
since forever as we’ve followed it
in history books & life
& certainly since you arrived
on this planet so breathtakingly
artful in its design on evils
& delights, on miracles & mayhem
& shame on us & on me
forgetting your skull cap’s masterpiece,
the field of Rorschach strawberry
where I’d plant my lips so often,
letting your follicle fragrance
fill me, a grace-given thing,
this infant essence, fecund
& flesh-scented, the bread
of stars if they could exhale
like animals, like the breath
of heaven, really, then the unseen
illness, the taking of pictures,
the requisite shearing of locks
grown long in your young
adulthood—I saw it—the good
friends flying in with their weed
& spirits, their laughter
& raucous playlists, the ceremony
of love your goofy lot performed,
first braiding then snipping
then shaving your head to its
nubby minimum so the chemo
could not get there first,
that fucking devil we’d bless
& curse as it snaked its orange
burn around your body
in the coming weeks & months
& how the shearing brought the mark
into view, the rouge kiss of a long-lost
lover peeking through your homemade
beanie knit by a family friend
from the church we don’t visit
anymore, not even on holidays
or to pray in pews under stained glass,
those ocular openings in the Neo-Gothic
vein since medieval Chartres
where divinity streams through—Oh,
you brave & worthy knight,
your body a cathedral, your bones,
holy relics humming the hymns
of coming health & weren’t we
the ones back when, always first
to the healing rail, our heads bowed
to receive the woo-woo spirit
where most were too proud
or embarrassed to kneel or believe
but we knew that the things worth
knowing are not the things we know
& when God is gone it means
church is everywhere & water
might turn to wine & stones to gold
& the greatest moment in the service
was when everything stopped
& the veil of words dropped
like a curtain of hair falling
& the people turned to touch
each other, saying Peace be with you
& Also with you, their trembling
hands a little like newborn
roses opening to morning
after the shadow of night has passed