A Poem for Nativity

And Did the Son of Man?

And did the Son of Man dream

In infancy of the splendor he’d left

And wake to the darkness he’d entered?

Did his mind’s hand feel his Father’s 

Before his fleshy fingers woke curled around his Mother’s?

Did his dreaming ear welcome angel hymns

And stir from sleep to human cries and tears?

Did his sleep-shuttered eye see the Spirit’s flame

And wake to warm coals baking bread in Bethlehem?

Did his sleep-stilled feet stride across galaxies

And wake to walk in a serpent’s desert and starving towns,

On storming seas and idol-strewn hills,

First toddling around a plain table 

Set with Sabbath wine and bread?

Did he behold untold glory in slumber

Only to wake to the untamed nightmare

We’d made of the wonder he fashioned

And came to restore?

Perhaps.

I think so. 

I do know

That after sleeping, he rose.

And by his rising,

We shall awaken.