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Friday, December 11, 2009

IMMORTALITY

A line or two
that's all I ask
to be remembered by
or even a felicitous phrase
to be or not to be
how do I love thee?
the LORD is my shepherd
you get the idea

The putting of words to paper
they say
is everything from
fool's errand
to
divine vocation

I'm not so sure it's anything more
– or less –
than a bid however feeble
to say something worth remembering
words to be recited -- please God --
by school children ages hence

And I'll bet if you'd asked
Will and Liz and Dave
about it
they'd have grinned
– sheepish --
and said
"yeah"
NOW AND THEN: ONCE UPON A WONDER


"Then" means once upon a wonder
when old man Harold Quincy lived next door.
Old and "wierd" -- or so my sister said,
who knew somehat of life;
she was nine years wise.
I was four and feared the Quincy place,
where, it was said, Harold spent his time
talking to his chickens.
Backyard bantams, mostly,
a few Rhode Island reds,
which scratched and scavenged, clucking now and then,
to keep their chicks in tow. I stayed away,
but sometimes heard him mumbling through the hedge.
And once or twice I peeped
and saw the battered hat he wore
and noticed rusty stains in his mustache.
"Oh. That," my mother said and sniffed.
"Tobacco juice. He chews."
And so I peeped some more.
To watch him spit.
He did, though mostly what he did
was talk. And not just to the hens.
Sometimes I heard him talking . . . well . . . to God.
At least I thought so then. Who knows?
Perhaps his "Precious Lord's" were something else instead,
and on his cheeks the tears I thought were tears
were not.
But anyway, I wondered.

And then when Christmas came that year,
I wondered when we sang that song in church.
You know, the one where Harold's angels
sing "Glory" to the new-born king.
The king, I thought, was Jesus.
God's son. And Mary's.
Her father owned a donkey,
and looked after the sheep,
and was under a haystack, fast asleep,
one cold winter's night that was so deep,
when the angels' singing woke him up.
Harold's angels, wings feathered like his hens'.
A wonder!

But, as my daughter likes to tell me,
in her nine years world-wise voice,
"That was then, Dad, then.
This is now!" And I know she is right.
Now it is indeed. And what a now it is,
this now where
mega weapons loom,
new virus plagues alarm,
the poorest poor still die.
In such a now the best of all good news
is still the tale, time-tattered,
of Holiness enfleshed.
Into this, our Now, He comes.
He comes. No less a wonder Now than Then.

©Kenneth L. Gibble