Annunciation
God spoke.
My own true love.
My chosen.
My handmaid
has silence in her soul, untrammeled love.
A time to be born.
Sudden dive by dream into reality.
I felt soft inward flutterings,
the Life
trembling through.
Love blooms,
bright
and wild.
Veiled in flesh,
Jesus begs to be born,
yields Himself to lie in prison,
in thee;
Yea thou art now thy Maker's maker,
and thy Father's mother;
Thou hast light in dark,
and shuttest in little room
Immensity
cloistered in thy dear womb.
He comes.
*
Birth
She waits while over there he knocks.
No room.
The steaming dung of beasts, their cloudy breath.
She fought the burning in her eyes.
The straw was cold, and snapped sounding each time
her body rolled.
Be strong as steel
lest Joseph sense the pain you feel.
Blood-strewn straw
Father be with us in the ripping dark
Her knotted string-wet hair
Sweat from trembling lips
He wrestles straining flesh
To free the stubborn child
From clutching womb
Pushing through
Blood-sweat groans
A sword shall pierce
An infant whimper in the dark.
The fresh-born king
bewails the warm womb lost,
an earthly roar of flesh and blood;
his hair curly black
eyes closed
his thin legs kick as Joseph
places him in Mary's arms
Small wonder
Fingers of a little child uncurling
The living water cupped at Mary's breast.
He comes.
Love's bloom,
bright
and wild.
Unto us a child is born.
Unto us a son is given.
*
Angels
I dreamed I was
some bird
or star
fluttering in woods
or lifted far above this inn.
The triumph of the skies,
wide, wheeling universe;
Reeling Andromeda,
the doubtful Magellanic clouds,
And all the silent dark light years unstrung between.
A dream,
the dark silk of the sky
above the town of Bethlehem.
Lo!
Like flares the angels came,
Brilliant zones of white-cold flame shatter this
proud cracked place
like a white blaze, lighting the air all around.
That great arc of angels!
See how their breath doth smoke.
Burning men
In flight with singing star-bursts from the hills.
Voices dip and soar like doves;
Fear not!
Glad tidings!
Great joy!
A Kingdom, like a bride adorned, descends.
The reign of darkness ends.
He comes.
The wildest miracle of them all.
*
by Ron Reed
Assembled from the poetry of Cor W. Barendrecht, Jene Beardsley, Paul Borgman, Frederick Buechner, Albert Howard Carter III, Kelli Conlin, David Craig, Jan De Groot, John Donne, Carolyn Keefe, Madeleine L'Engle, Beth Merizon, Calvin Miller, Vassar Miller, Barbara K. Olson, Eugene H. Peterson, Marie J. Post, Elizabeth Rooney, Dorothy L. Sayers, Luci Shaw, John W. Simons, Thomas Traherne, Henry Vaughan, Jeanne Murray Walker and Charles Wesley
for "Dreams Of Kings & Carpenters" (Pacific Theatre, Dec 9-20, 1986)
