The Annunciation
after a painting by Raphael Soyer
(Smithsonian American Art Museum)
Our Mary is nothing like Isis,
Delilah or Judith, Pandora
Or Athena, but a washerwoman,
Her simple raiment, a light blue shift--
Blue of mourning dove, elemental,
And she holds a white towel,
Her hands open underneath
Recalling the orans, a gesture
Of prayer, of supplication.
The room is sterile--
No tea table or plush chair
Only a stark basin, few clothes hanging
On the right which underscores
An impoverished life, and the angel is Mary’s
Twin only she’s clad in violet--
Stitch of fire, of the church
Draperies hanging down on Passion week.
The angel is barefoot, tentative as Artemis,
Her errant weight shifting from one leg
To another as she looks apprehensively
Reluctantly at the Virgin girl, awaiting
The one response as the entire world
Spins rinsed in the scent of suds and cleanliness.
Leonore Wilson is a college English and creative writing instructor from Napa Valley. She is on the MFA Board of St Mary’s of California. Her work has been featured in such magazines as Quarterly West, Prairie Schooner, DMQ Review, Third Coast, TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, etc. Recently her historic home and ranch burned to the ground in the LNU fire of Napa Valley.
