To bless once meant to draw blood 
as with the tip of a blade,
blessing, the act of wounding.
And now it has come to mean
a cutting through what cannot be seen
the way a saint might pass her hand,
over the bent head of a supplicant.
Or how a mother begins to weep
as her newborn is handed to her for the first time.

Is ordinary goodness more than we can bear?

Lovers have the name of the beloved
pierced into their flesh, their pleasure so unbearable
only the point of a needle can say
what ecstasy they suffer.

The minister prays over the newlyweds
may you be blessed all your days
yet we know they will be wounded
by each other. We count our blessings,
the ways life has broken
us. Hail Mary, blessed among women,
weeping at the feet of her only son.

What a blessing to be alive, we say
knowing this life is so unlikely, so near impossible
that it is a blessing to be born at all,
to come into this world wailing,
covered in blood.