A decade or more before the turn of the millennium, we were living in an old farmhouse on a hillside above the village where I had recently begun teaching at a small college. The house faced hills to the east and the village lay below us along the river in the valley. My wife was in the ninth month of pregnancy, our child due somewhere around Christmas.
Our close neighbor, living in another old farmhouse no more that one hundred feet away, was also expecting near the end of December. It was a great joy for both women to share that season of pregnancy as good and comfortable friends.
I have lost some of the precise details of this story in the years since. But what I know with certainty is that our neighbors' son arrived just ahead of Christmas day, while our son delayed well into January. When we heard our neighbors' news from the father, Paul, I began to reflect -- or "ponder," as we are told Mary did -- on all things related to the birth of a child into our world in this season of short days and continuing cold.
What did it mean, such a unique, yet completely common, human experience? I imagined Paul coming home from the hospital in the wee dark hours of that December morning when all the people he might rush to tell were still asleep. As is my habit, I wrote out of that moment -- which survives here in this poem, "News of Your Son."
News of Your Son
A tiny star
in the black wilderness
of a winter morning,
the air like iron.
Wind has ceased,
boots crunch in the snow.
The horses, still shadows;
houses on streets below
the pasture
closed down, like sleeping faces.
Slow smoke of banked fires.
Now you on this errand
at this hour
in this deadly air
in the pit of winter,
looking for someone
to share your joy at this news . . .
The question is, "how might one announce such a singularly joyous event to a world that considers such things commonplace?" Or, we could ask "why detail a personal event as if it were a moment of universal consequence?" Christmas was on my mind -- but why run the two stories together?
The best answer I can give is that each child is born defenseless, through a woman's travail. Yet from that moment of water and blood, a child is born with eternity in his or her heart.
That observation might be made of every good poem as well. So, a poem about our neighbor resonates with the Bible account of the Incarnation. It is true, brothers and sisters, that we walk with one foot on the stony path and the one foot on an eternal one. Today we are newly reminded of our condition. This is the day of God's favor. May we always count it so.
Thank you for sharing.
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