Advent Paradox
- Details
- Written November 2023
Expected, but unexpected,
Promised and accepted
As an extraordinarily planned baby
Who comes in simplicity and innocence,
Untainted by a world of desire
Erupting into envy and anger.
But he's willing to bear all of that
In a life of selflessness,
As an incubator down the road
Switches off in deprivation
And the other child dies helpless,
While we light an advent candle,
Still committed, and with hope.
November 2023
He Comes
- Details
- Written November 2022
Or an annual celebration
But repeated time and again,
Available on request
Or even uninvited,
But finding he's at the back of the mind.
Until the light dawns
And faith confirms imagination.
As hope returns
Attitudes change,
With values born afresh,
Until he takes his rightful place
Centre-stage
With a new way of life.
November 2022
Anticipation
- Details
- Written December 2017
And the trees by the rivers of water
Rock at the roots as the world shakes
Under uncertainties, extending
From Pyongyang to Harare and beyond,
While the clouds race across the skies
Swept on, covering sun, moon and stars
That should shed a radiance, but don't.
While a baby lies in a manger
With animals of the night queuing
Alongside ox and ass, for a peep,
Just wishing he'd settle the storm.
But his time has not yet come
So we, and they, wait patiently,
Believing one day he will say:
'Peace be still' - and it will happen.
December 2017
Just Waiting
- Details
- Written November 2018
Its own life given offering life to others,
Revealing pigments dormant from the beginning,
Shining through the cuticle of the leaf,
Exposing shades of autumn we admire
Yet know they too will fade and disappear
As the dislocated leaf flutters down,
Falling gently with the beauty of the years.
But future hopes waken with prospects of spring;
Another year of waiting for it to happen,
Expecting a solemn promise to come true;
The start of a life we thought that wasn't there
But celebrated now in the discoveries of birth
Of someone who comes to surprise the world with joy.
November 2018
Photo: Sheffield Park,
Born in the City of David
- Details
- Written December 2016
The queue edges forward in a quest for light
In a darkness quelled only by energy-savers
Dangling baubles and chandeliers under scaffolding
That clads a building under the crane's renovation,
With a ring-a-ring of roses towards the altar
Adorned by the holy family that is not yet one
In the waiting game of an over-crowded town
Making the most of expectant visitors
Whose existence needs to be registered
In a land occupied by the unwanted,
Waiting for someone who'll make life better
Yet rejecting the one bathed in frankincense
Because he wasn't quite who we thought he was.
Bethlehem
November 2016
That clads a building under the crane's renovation,
With a ring-a-ring of roses towards the altar
Adorned by the holy family that is not yet one
In the waiting game of an over-crowded town
Making the most of expectant visitors
Whose existence needs to be registered
In a land occupied by the unwanted,
Waiting for someone who'll make life better
Yet rejecting the one bathed in frankincense
Because he wasn't quite who we thought he was.
Bethlehem
November 2016