Grace, twenty-eight years old

Weighed down with all
the sheep’s clothing I
have daily donned,
this wolf-face I
deny but own,
and all my other faces too;

smothered in
self and this
stink-to-heaven stench of all
that I have scattered, sown, now reap,
decked in dead flowers,
sprouting pride,

staring in the face of true
holiness – a lion on
the prowl; a white
and fiery Day,
consuming my
protective night:

and then: a hand
to guide into
a fire which does not destroy;
the gentle rising of the sun;
the lion’s mane lowered to me;
the shepherd dying for the wolf.