three dreams | ron reed

1. ANNUNCIATION

God spoke.     
                     
     My own true love.
     My chosen.
     My handmaid 
     has silence in her soul, untrammeled love.       

A time to be born.

Sudden dive by dream into reality.                    

     I felt soft inward flutterings,                              
     the Life 
     trembling through.        

Love blooms, 
bright 
and wild.  
                          
Veiled in flesh,
Jesus begs to be born,                                
yields Himself to lie in prison, 
in thee; 

Yea thou art now thy Maker's maker, 
and thy Father's mother;
Thou hast light in dark, 
and shuttest in little room
Immensity 
cloistered in thy dear womb.

He comes.

 
2. BIRTH

She waits while over there he knocks.
     No room.

The steaming dung of beasts, their cloudy breath.
She fought the burning in her eyes.                   
The straw was cold, and snapped sounding each time 
her body rolled.                              
     Be strong as steel 
     lest Joseph sense the pain you feel.
Blood-strewn straw                                
     Father be with us in the ripping dark                
Her knotted string-wet hair                       
Sweat from trembling lips

He wrestles straining flesh                           
To free the stubborn child
From clutching womb
Pushing through
Blood-sweat groans
A sword shall pierce

An infant whimper in the dark.
The fresh-born king                                   
bewails the warm womb lost,                           
an earthly roar of flesh and blood;                   

his hair   curly   black
eyes closed
His thin legs kick as Joseph
places him in Mary's arms.                            

Small wonder
Fingers of a little child uncurling
The living water cupped at Mary's breast.

He comes.
Love's bloom, 
bright 
and wild. 

     Unto us a child is born.
     Unto us a son is given.

 
3. ANGELS

I dreamed I was
some bird 
or star                       
fluttering in woods 
or lifted far above this inn.

The triumph of the skies,
wide, wheeling universe;                            
Reeling Andromeda, 
the doubtful Magellanic clouds,
And all the silent dark light years unstrung between.  

A dream,
the dark silk of the sky
above the town of Bethlehem.

     Lo!  

Like flares the angels came,                      
Brilliant zones of white-cold flame shatter this 
proud  cracked place                               
like a white blaze, lighting the air all around.      

That great arc of angels!                             
See how their breath doth smoke.                      
Burning men
In flight with singing star-bursts from the hills.    
 
Voices dip and soar like doves;                       
     Fear not!
     Glad tidings!
     Great joy!

A Kingdom, like a bride adorned, descends.            
The reign of darkness ends.

He comes.

The wildest miracle of them all.


*

Assembled from the poetry of Cor W. Barendrecht, Jene Beardsley, Paul Borgman, Frederick Buechner, Albert Howard Carter III, Kelli Conlin, David Craig, Jan De Groot, John Donne, Carolyn Keefe, Madeleine L'Engle, Beth Merizon, Calvin Miller, Vassar Miller, Barbara K. Olson, Eugene H. Peterson, Marie J. Post, Elizabeth Rooney, Dorothy L. Sayers, Luci Shaw, John W. Simons, Thomas Traherne, Henry Vaughan, Jeanne Murray Walker and Charles Wesley
for "Dreams Of Kings & Carpenters" (Pacific Theatre, 1999)

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