“WHO IS MY MOTHER?”

They said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside looking for you.” And he replied, “Who is my mother or my brothers?” And looking at those seated around him, he says, “”See! my mother and my brothers!” Mark 3:32-33

And why, then, did you try to call him back—

that time you sought him out, you and his brothers,

and he replaced the lot of you with those others

that sat around him? Had your faith gone slack?

the memory of the angel’s words grown dim

after these thirty years? Or was it sorrow

for all the dangers threatening on the morrow

that prompted you to make this claim on him?

And then he un-sonned himself, un-mothered you,

sundered the priority of birth,

and made a new-formed family on earth,

sign of God’s will to make the world anew.

And you’re the mother of it all—at cost

of that first motherhood you now had lost.