luci shaw | five nativity poems

1 

“...the power of the Most High will overshadow you...” 

When we think of God, and 

angels, and the Angel, 

we suppose ineffable light.

So there is surprise in the air 

when we see him bring Mary, 

in her lit room, a gift of darkness.

What is happening under that 

huge wing of shade? In that mystery 

what in-breaking wildness fills her?

She is astonished and afraid; even in 

the secret twilight she bends her head, 

hiding her face behind the curtain

of her hair; she knows that 

the rest of her life will mirror 

this blaze, this sudden midnight.

2

What next, she wonders,

with the angel disappearing, and her room

suddenly gone dark.

The loneliness of her news

possesses her. She ponders

how to tell her mother.

Still, the secret at her heart burns like

a sun rising. How to hold it in – 

that which cannot be contained.

She nestles into herself, half-convinced

it was some kind of good dream,

she its visionary.

But then, part dazzled, part prescient –

she hugs her body, a pod with a seed

that will split her.

3

it seemed too much to ask 

of one small virgin 

that she should stake shame 

against the will of God.

All she had to hold to 

were those soft, inward 

flutterings 

and the remembered sting 

of a brief junction—spirit 

with flesh.

who would think it 

more than a dream wish? 

an implausible, laughable 

defense.

and it seems much 

too much to ask me 

to be part of the 

different thing— 

God’s shocking, unorthodox, 

unheard of Thing

to further heaven’s hopes 

and summon God’s glory.

4

The Third week, and about now

Mary is heavy with God, her first

and the Father’s only, with a journey

to plan for, going south. Anxiety

is in the air. It is so dark and cold

and kind Joseph is only a man, not

a midwife. She feels answerable

for the welfare of the heaving life

in her belly.

Let us feel with Mary in her

waiting and knowing. And not 

knowing. Today I try to remember

all the world’s mothers and every

new child yet to arrive, made

in the same God-likeness. Pray

for more than a cave in the hill town

when their time comes. Though that

will do if there is love enough.

5

Jesus looking like a real baby, not

a bony homunculus, solemn and all-knowing.

The quill in the hand of his newly minted mother

stretches toward the bottle of ink a beautiful boy saint

is holding out. He has waited for centuries for her

to write in a book the next words of her own Magnificat,

for the Gospel of St. Luke, and for us to sing in church.

Two other youths try to lower a crown onto her head.

It is too large for her, and they've held it there for so long,

but she seems bored with royalty, eyes only for

her son, and his for her. In her left hand, as she

supports the child, she holds a pomegranate

under his fingers for him to pluck, its red leather skin

peeled back to expose its packed rubies.

Centuries later the paint and the fruit are fresh 

and tart as ever, glowing like blood cells.

I wonder about sound in the room - small talk among

the impossibly adolescent saints. Mary talking baby talk,

perhaps, or singing as if she has swallowed a linnet - 

Mary with the pale green voice, nothing coloratura,

more like grapes glowing from a low trellis.

In the moist Italian twilight, a cricket is likely to be sawing

like the sawing of cedar boards in the work room just outside

the painting's frame - Joseph laboring on a baby bed.

But there isn't a bird or an insect. There is just this lovely girl,

waking to motherhood, humming, content, in this

moment in time, to be God's mother, to hold Jesus,

when he cries to her leaking breast.

As Botticelli lifts with his skilled hand a fine brush

to add the next word to her song, we look with him

through the lens of his devotion, into this ornate room.

He paints love pouring through her skin like light,

her eyes resting on the child as though

he is all there is, as though her knowing will never

be complete. Right from the beginning

"How can this be?" circles her mind with its echo.

          *                          *                          *

"When we think of God..."  The Overshadow 

"what next, she wonders..." mary considers her situation

"it seemed too much to ask..." too much to ask

"the third week..." Advent III: for Marya Gjorgiev

"Jesus looking like a real baby..." Madonna and Child, with Saints