Thank you for connecting with me over the last year through my blog. As is my tradition, I wrote a poem for Christmas, my way to engage the wonder and mystery of the season.
I pray that the humility of Christ in these apoplectic times resonates with your mind and quiets your heart this Christmas.
After All*
Christmas 2019
After the frenetic pace of the cross-country
journey and the frantic search for any
place with a warm, clean
room
All the strange and surprising
collisions of an obscure tribe over
generations (devious ploys, barren
wombs, grumbling in the desert, implausible
gambles) while Heaven
wove its will with the human thread
through time
Once the prayers of
some thousand women and
men through the ages
filled the golden bowls
of Heaven like so much
frankincense so that, of
all disguises, the Messiah
could side step the marble
corridors of Augustus
opulent halls of Herod to be
born of a woman
as helpless babe
When that first, stark cry
from fluid-filled lungs
split not only the cold hill country air
but history
in two
All He wanted to do
was look at Him
The soft sea
shell of an ear that
one day would
hear the Spirit’s
whisper
Eyes dark as the
expanse between two stars
alert yet unable to see beyond
the cooing voices round the
manger, eyes that would fiercely
search the world of men
help the blind to see
The crescent moon
of a fingernail
curled into the palm of the smallest
hand that could hold the universe
together, open willingly to be
pierced with a rusted
Roman spike
The mystery of ages
revealed, hope of
nations born
as the great doorway
to life turned open on its
eternal hinge to release
from its great stores
a flurry of redemption upon
the arid earth
All He wanted
was to look
at Him
Andrew Kooman – London, Ontario
© 2019
* Not to be distributed or reprinted without permission from the author.