Female study three: Bernadette

Beautiful Catholic Bernadette,
the contradictory black sheep,
hair like a witch’s streak of white,
conception ruled you’d never reach
the obligatory brunette
sung in your sisters’ six-part mass.

It was totally inappropriate,
but wholly within character,
for you to flick your fag-ash on the floor
at your bloody-minded father’s wake,
rippling the warm after-death tipple,
to drag your boyfriends home from hell
and trash the positive-thinking books
that kept your mother’s faith from fading
like the blooms in the tangled garden
or the sweat-thumbed notes in her purse.

You had the look of her easy prime,
the high-arched brows and marbled skin,
unlike the eighth who looked as drawn
and tired as her worn-out skull,
as if the womb now cried, "Enough!"
and continuing might produce a corpse.

Did the holy water spill your brow
when you dangled lightly over the font?
Did the sight of the gentle saint
distract the fold from the damp at their feet,
the stream rushing at the closed church doors
and the river in the open street?

Did it sprawl and fan to a delta?
Did its current gently set you down
where sacring bells don’t stir the air
and horses breed free, milky young,
where infants curl their toes in the sand
and turn their heads to droplets of sun?

(Biscuit Publishing, 2003 Prizewinners)