Caitlin Smith Gilson's poem “My Child, My Little One: Ad Jesum per Mariam” is taken from Luminous Darkness: The Passion of the Last Words (Wipf & Stock, 2025), a forthcoming collection of her poems.
Long ago I was young
I did not know it then
But it was for you
To be this dying comet of love
Finishing my soul in you
I was created for you
Before you were born
Made by love for you
Created by you
This is how time works
What ends always begins again
The hours we have now
Have always been the only play
The only stage
The only way home
These hours together are my dying
These hours my conceiving
The curve of your cheek
Every nectar scented kiss
Your unmistakable face
I would know you in blindness
In the night of my mind
In you I have lived
Loved even more
I was born that day
Your touch encased me
Enclosed me in your littleness
You have been a rose
The bud of a rose
The remaining scent after the waterfall
And still you encase me now
That half of me halved again
That day
This my child, my little one
Is how time works
We are measured in giving
Time with you is my only dying
Loving you has been the only form of love
That is too good
To land anywhere on earth
Because of you
Even in the grave
I will float into sky and to river
Live my cherished one by water
So that I may come to you always
Caitlin Smith Gilson is Professor of Philosophy at University of Holy Cross, New Orleans. She is the author of several books of philosophy, theology, and poetry, most recently As It Is in Heaven: Some Christian Questions on the Nature of Paradise (Cascade, 2022).