A Poem for Advent

I Will Carry
(A Meditation on Advent)

Above the hills the pale moon
Eyes the ones who travel.
Night comes early and soon
A tree, a sheltering hill
Provides them cover, all they’ll need.
They sleep wrapped in moonlight
By a tiny fire.  The dark night
Framing constellations sees
Them sleep; this day’s journey done.

Has He let His hosts look on
Throughout the watching night?
Do they stand guard against
Darker hazards beyond our sin dimmed sight?

No matter, they sleep who weary must
Sleep.  Tomorrow they will walk again
The long and rocky road to Bethlehem.
I will carry and move to help. To reach
Across an age.  To do.  But, “No!”  He says,
“Your time will come.  Rough wood yours
To lift while raging crowd roars,
Wildlings rip.  Sit! Wait!  Pray!”

I do as night goes silent west beyond
Hills where waking birds hungry greet the dawn.
They watch the rise of that far off sun
Their first steps in disappearing mist along
The now familiar way walking hand in hand
With all of us.  For all of us, a child
Preparing as they go, so tiny, mild,
To enter history.  Thus by order grand
From Rome’s great Augustus, the man made god
They pick their unshod way along.  And though
Man made god decreed this time, God made man
                                                  breaks time apart!

His infant’s cry shatters from bare stable small,
Palaces, powerful, man made gods, all!

peg
The Feast of St. Andrew, 2012