Annunciation, by Hannah Mahoney

Annunciation of Cortona, by Fra Angelico (Italy). 1443–1444.

Annunciation

I was reading
on the verandah;
the day was pleasant,
the air warm.

Then the birdsong fell silent
and the sky went dark
as though a squall
were coming in off the sea.

I sensed a shimmering
of gold, a rustling
as of draped silk,
a flutter of wings:

a figure was bending
toward me, words
streaming toward me.
They, too, seemed golden.

I was to bear the child
of the heavenly father,
this figure said unto me, 
though whether

I heard the words
or felt them or read them
in the air I really
couldn’t say.

I felt a sharpness
in my temples.
My shoulders carried
some weight beyond bearing.

And as sure as I have ever
known anything, I knew
that this service would cost me
all I had to give.

And then I heard
whispered supplications
in a hundred tongues
I didn’t know yet understood.

Ave, ave, ave,
pray for us now
and at the hour of our death.

I remembered how we danced
for my grandmother
beneath the cedars
as the evening cool came in.

And, hands splayed on my chest,
my red dress exposed
within my fallen-open blue robe,
I submitted to the charge.

Hannah Mahoney

Hannah Mahoney's work has appeared in a variety of print and online journals, including One Sentence Poems and Modern Haiku, and she was the featured poet for September 2018 at the Mann Library Daily Haiku website. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.