Recommended Reading

Poem by Jan Richardson

(a different perspective on Mary's visitation

from the Archangel Gabriel)

​

For a moment, I hesitated on the threshold.

For the space of a breath, I paused

Unwilling to disturb

Her last ordinary moment…

The artists would later depict the scene

Mary dazzled by the archangel,

Her head bowed in humble assent

Awed by the messenger…

Yet I tell you it was I who was dazzled

I who found myself agape

Reading?  the loom?  in the kitchen?

I cannot recall.

Only that the woman before me -

“Blessed and full of grace”

Long before I called her so -

Shimmered with how completely

She inhabited herself

Inhabited the space around her

Inhabited the moment 

That hung between us.

I want to save her from what I had been sent to say

Yet when the time came, 

When I stammered the invitation

(History would not record the sweat on my brow, the pounding of my heart;

Would not note, that I said

“Do not be afraid” 

To myself as much as to her.)

It was she who saved me, 

Her first deliverance.