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Poetry

From The Parables of Mary Magdalene

It is like a child asleep outside in her basket, shaded from late afternoon sun, veiled against evening flies, under her parents’ loving watch.

Night is coming down, silently, like a worm on its strand of silk. The wind picks up.

Let me feed her before we go inside, the mother says. She says, This feels like the last evening of summer.

The wind is turning, faster now, like iron boring the hole in a millstone.

The father goes inside to fasten the shutters. The mother and the child at her breast are lifted skyward and set down unharmed, naked, in the temple courtyard.

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