Woman Dressed in her Long Hair
—after Donatello’s Mary Magdalene
As if the ointment were not enough,
the heavy skein of her hair
smeared with unguent and the soil from his feet,
the gardener at the empty tomb not a sign
of special grace—
or because such grace
was too much for a woman.
Her heart was mute and flooded.
Say it was simple. A need
for pain to numb her grief.
She found a cave somewhere
on the borders of the empire,
almost, it seemed to her, a crypt.
A woman possessed
by holiness could live there for years
measured by the drip of limestone
till all her flesh had pooled like wax
and only the flame of her eyes remained,
like the mad eyes of this morning’s pilgrims
fetal on the sidewalk grates.
– susan settlemyre williams