Incarnation

When did you become fully man, and how did you experience 
what it was to be formed 
inside a woman? 

Did you watch the jeers she took for your conception
from afar or within?
When she was called a whore in the streets, how did this sit with you
inside her womb,
subjecting yourself to the humility of birth? 

The experience of women 
you know from your mother, 
an unwed teenager, 
and how did you regard her; 
from afar or beside her? 

The mess of womanhood, 
the phoenix-like 
life and death cycles 
fashioned into us. 
You took on the flesh of a man. 
To whom, then, 
can I look as I bear 
the slights of a woman?