A Simple Young Woman Who Married a Carpenter

There’s the mother stunned and bleeding
The men talk above her

She knew what to do
babies were ordinary

though the proceeding
could be dangerous.

Not reliably a child until
he showed a tendency to live

The shepherds are excited, credulous.
They’re night men, the hired help,

there to deliver the news of their news
and trek back to work.

Not all of them came.
Someone had to keep watch,

and a child, after all—
not much more than a lamb

____________________________________________

Job Verses 38–40

Thomas Berry says, to save the planet
There must be a mystique of the rain
and making it is
the job of the poet.

But when God asked Job
Who can stay the bottles of heaven?
Job decided he had said too much
and stopped the conversation.

Now the heavenly bottles crack.
How to make this mystique,
revere what we wound?
Mystique for mistook?

Slicked creatures
gasp along the beaches.
We have drawn out the leviathan with a hook.
Now, Will he speak soft words?