I Want to Say Your Name

I Want to Say Your Name

a love poem

I want to say your name

the way Jesus said, “Mary,”

at the unstopped tomb, when he was

halfway resurrected, unwrapped

but not ascended, spirit and body

in that fragile, persistent mix.

“Mary,” he said, and she knew him.

“Mary,” and she must have moved toward him

for he said, do not touch me now

I am between things.

“Mary,” he said, and she changed, as if

an hour earlier she had been a child, Her name

held all of her and it was his gift.

He said it once, which was forever.

I would say yours once, to seal

who you are, why I’ve stayed.

“Mary,” he said (I would say your name)

and the wind blew between the letters.

Stars hung low over the peaks of the M

and in the a, a world orbited.

Veronica Patterson, Swan What Shores? (New York: New York Univ. Press, 2000), 23.