Eldest Daughter: Poems

The Holy Ghost Designs the Perfect Woman

24 The Holy Ghost Designs the Perfect Woman When The Holy Ghost first thought of making a woman, He’d have rubbed His hands together if He’d had any. A woman! That would show The Son, so smug in His historic manifestation, spoiled rotten by His status as favorite child. The one thing on earth The Father failed to give Him. The problem was, The Holy Ghost had always preferred men. Men at least seemed halfway between matter and spirit. It gave them a kind of Gnostic edge, in His opinion. It baffled Him the way men spent as much time yearning after women as they spent yearning after pure idea. Women seemed to Him as soaked with matter as a forked log sunk in a slow, warm river. He sneered at the old stories, the sky gods who fell on mortal women—Zeus on Europa, to cite an example. Out-moded gods, with too many characteristics and far too prone to hierophany. And everyone knew The Father mixed it up with one. Called it a one-time fling, nothing serious. The Holy Ghost felt His scorn mounting, His resolve waver. The Virgin Mary disgusted Him— not merely out of family taboo, but all that talk about baths and purification, and drips of breast milk that transubstantiated into diamonds. To renew His intention, He focused on AGAPE, and in His cycling reason, a strategy formed. He’d make her out of Himself! Make her cleanly as argument spawns counterargument. Ribless, as He was. Moreover, this could not diminish Him, since any part of infinity is itself infinite. She’d be 25 a Holy Ghostess, beyond the grasp of any sculptor, arriving without all the foam and scallop shells. A masterstroke cross between Sappho and Sophia. Fire without hearth, nurture without breast, more eyeless than justice, more disembodied than truth. Already boundless, He felt himself expand anew, in love without falling, without head or heels. A mirror vision, freed from glass or silver backing, to worship, to adore, forever and ever. A woman every body would want, but no body could have. Only Him. Alone. Him alone. This page intentionally left blank ...