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