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 
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