this is my body and my words
I speak as I come before you
as if before an altar to sacrifice
all I have of my body and my words
for you who wait like a baby bird
to take the offering on your tongue
then mouth it back as your own as in
a ritualistic reading of the Eucharist
until we are transformed from individual
meanings of reader writer and poem
into a transcendent embodiment of grace
which flows a wine-dark blood through our veins
caressing each of our feather-like capillaries
until we disappear into beatific ecstasy
(March 2013)