Martin Luther King Jr.

A man went forth with gifts.

He was a prose poem.
He was a tragic grace.
He was a warm music.

He tried to heal the vivid volcanoes.
His ashes are
reading the world.

His Dream still wishes to anoint
the barricades of faith and of control.

His word still burns the center of the sun
above the thousands and the
hundred thousands.

The word was Justice. It was spoken.

So it shall be spoken.
So it shall be done.

--Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000), African American poet, first Black author to win the Pulitzer Prize, also awarded the National Book Award, and other honors. This poem was written in 1968 after the assassination of Dr. King on April 4 in Memphis. Dr. King day is the Monday closest to his birthday of January 15, 1929.

Early Frost

This morning the world’s white face reminds us
that life intends to become serious again.
And the same loud birds that all summer long
annoyed us with their high attitudes and chatter
silently line the gibbet of the fence a little stunned,
chastened enough.

They look as if they’re waiting for things
to grow worse, but are watching the house,
as if somewhere in their dim memories
they recall something about this abandoned garden
that could save them.

The neighbor’s dog has also learned to wake
without exaggeration. And the neighbor himself
has made it to his car with less noise, starting
the small engine with a kind of reverence. At the window
his wife witnesses this bleak tableau, blinking
her eyes, silent.

I fill the feeders to the top and cart them
to the tree, hurrying back inside
to leave the morning to these ridiculous
birds, who, reminded, find the rough shelters,
bow, and then feed.

--Scott Cairns (1954- ) English professor at Mizzou and Orthodox Christian

Winter Trees

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

--William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), American physician and poet of the Imagist school

The Epiphany

O strangest thing that God doth now begin,
               In being which, he hath no godheads grace:
              O strangest Roome, this subject takes his place,
In want of room, for none was in his Inne.

O strangest color to be viewed in,
              For humane darknesse vailed hath his face.
              O strangest middle of respective space,
Where as a starre more than the sunne could win.

O strangest star that must reveale this sight
that by disorder from the rest gives light.

O strangest eyes that saw him by this starre,
Who when bystanders saw not, saw so farre.

And since such wonders were in seeing him
No wonder if my wondring thought grow dim.

--William Alabaster (1567-1640), English poet, playwright, convert to Catholicism and then back to Anglicanism, and priest

Wise Women Also Came

Wise women also came.

The fire burned in their wombs long before 

they saw 

the flaming star in the sky.

They walked in shadows, trusting the path 

would open under the light of the moon.

Wise women also came, 

seeking no directions, 

no permission from any king.

They came by their own authority, 

their own desire, 

their own longing.

They came in quiet, spreading no rumours, 

sparking no fears to lead to innocents' slaughter,
to their sister Rachel's inconsolable lamentations.

Wise women also came, 

and they brought useful gifts:
water for labour's washing, 

fire for warm illumination, 

a blanket for swaddling.

Wise women also came, 

at least three of them,
holdingMary in the labour,
crying out with her in the birth pangs,
breathing ancient blessings into her ear.

Wise women also came, 

and they went, 

as wise women always do, 

home a different way.

--Jan Richardson (1947- ) American Methodist artist, poet, and teacher, from Night Visions: Searching for Shadows of Advent and Christmas

Scripture Reference Matthew 2:1-12

Shining-Forth

We know now
   the night sky as ancient record-
   the ages and eons required
for the light of each star to fall on our eyes.
If we look up.
                        We may even
look upon what has flared out and died
when life was new and God’s song of creation
echoed still through galaxies, the final blast of light
trailing behind, Schroedinger’s star,
   dead and alive at once,
perhaps memory only, but like all memories
   still serving as guide in the now.

Lured by a star, did they
stop as dawn drew a blue
diaphanous veil between earth and heaven?
                                                                      Or did they
continue westward, shifting their allegiance to the sun?

But here they are now, turning up
   dusty, grimy from the road, uneasy.
They shake sand from their beards as if ruefully disagreeing.

The door is low—bowing they enter,
then bowing again, offering
gold, frankincense, myrrh
power, worship, anointing.
All that meets their eyes
   could be dismissed as humble. Yet
as the infant gaze blinks and falls upon them,
and in eyes as wide and wise as centuries
the star’s birth flares anew,
                        alpha and omega.

After cradling him gently in callused, weathered hands,
   one by one that fire descended and swelled within each heart.
As if awakened from a dream,
they stumbled through the low-slung door
   to draw all nations to awe and praise.
The road is now elsewhere.
They go home now by another way.

--Leslie Barnes Scoopmire, Epiphany 2023,

first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul, January 5, 2023

Scripture reference Matthew 2:1-12

Nativity Poem

Imagine striking a match that night in the cave:
Imagine crockery, try to make use of its glaze
To feel cold cracks in the floor, the blankness of hunger.
Imagine the desert – but the desert is everywhere.

Imagine striking a match in that midnight cave,
The fire, the farm beasts in outline, the farm tools and stuff;
And imagine, as you towel your face in the enveloping folds,
Mary, Joseph, and the Infant in swaddling clothes.

Imagine the kings, the caravans’ stilted procession
As they make for the cave, or, rather, three beams closing in
And in on the star, the creaking of loads, the clink of a cowbell;
(No thronging of Heaven as yet, no peal of the bell

That will ring in the end for the infant once he has earned it).
Imagine the Lord, for the first time, from darkness, and stranded
Immensely in distance, recognizing Himself in the Son
Of Man: His homelessness plain to him now in a homeless one.

--Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996), Russian-American poet and essayist; translated from Russian by Seamus Heaney.

The Wise Men

Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
And we know all things but the truth.

We have gone round and round the hill
And lost the wood among the trees,
And learnt long names for every ill,
And served the mad gods, naming still
The furies the Eumenides.

The gods of violence took the veil
Of vision and philosophy,
The Serpent that brought all men bale,
He bites his own accursed tail,
And calls himself Eternity.

Go humbly…it has hailed and snowed…
With voices low and lanterns lit;
So very simple is the road,
That we may stray from it.

The world grows terrible and white,
And blinding white the breaking day;
We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
And something much too plain to say.

The Child that was ere worlds begun
(…We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone…)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is playing with a little hay.

The house from which the heavens are fed,
The old strange house that is our own,
Where trick of words are never said,
And Mercy is as plain as bread,
And Honour is as hard as stone.

Go humbly, humble are the skies,
And low and large and fierce the Star;
So very near the Manger lies
That we may travel far.

Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes
To roar to the resounding plain.
And the whole heaven shouts and shakes,
For God Himself is born again,
And we are little children walking
Through the snow and rain.

--G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), English journalist, essayist, apologist, and poet

Scripture reference: Matthew 2:1-12

Epiphany Poem

The red king
Came to a great water. He said,
Here the journey ends.
No keel or skipper on this shore.

The yellow king
Halted under a hill. He said,
Turn the camels round.
Beyond, ice summits only.

The black king
Knocked on a city gate. He said,
All roads stop here.
These are gravestones, no inn.

The three kings
Met under a dry star.
There, at midnight,
The star began its singing.

The three kings
Suffered salt, snow, skulls.
They suffered the silence
Before the first word.


--George Mackay Brown (1921-1996) Scots poet from the Orkney islands and convert to Catholicism.

Scripture reference: Matthew 2:1-12 (Feast of the Epiphany)

Blessing of the Magi

There is no reversing
this road.
The path that bore you here
goes in one direction only,
every step drawing you
down a way
by which you will not
return.

You thought arrival
was everything,
that your entire journey
ended with kneeling
in the place
you had spent all
to find.

When you laid down
your gift,
release came with such ease,
your treasure tumbling
from your hands
in awe and
benediction.

Now the knowledge
of your leaving
comes like a stone laid
over your heart,
the Family.liar path closed
and not even the solace
of a star
to guide your way.

You will set out in fear.
You will set out in dream.

But you will set out

by that other road
that lies in shadow
and dark.

We cannot show you
what route will
take you home;
that way is yours
and will be found
in the walking.

But we tell you,
you will wonder
at how the light you thought
you had left behind
goes with you,
spilling from
your empty hands,
shimmering beneath
your homeward feet,
illuminating the road
with every step
you take.


-- Jan Richardson (1967- ) American Methodist artist, poet, and theologian, from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons