Sometimes I only see
when preparing to show someone else:

    “Now, imagine this:
    What if you couldn’t read?
    What would you notice?
    The lilies?
    The light?”

Gabriel’s message
is a motion, curling—
script unfurling in amber flame,
like the words remember heaven
and are already going home.

The curve of the scroll as it rises,
as if exhaled
or drawn back toward heaven,
is also Pentecost—
the Word,
the breath,
the gift of speech beyond letters.

If today I can read
the upside-down Latin,
it is only because
I already know the words.

But I had never seen
the sentence climb,
toward the Speaker of the sentence,
as if this greeting
were not so much delivered
as retrieved,
unrolled from the memory of God
to suffuse the glass,
letter by letter,
back into the mouth
that first thought her possible.

    “We are learning how to see,
    and how to be surprised by seeing.”