the unchanging manger scene
don’t stop me
if you’ve heard this
it’s a Christmas question
about the magi
and their placement
in the creche
because we tend to know
or to believe
or to opine
that these persons from
well
the east of east
did not find Jesus
for two years
or more
not maybe less
and then it was to visit
inside Nazareth of Galilee
and was the flight
to Egypt
by the way
before or after
well
the visit of the magi
anyway
after some time
after the shepherds
angels in the sky
though angels could return
whenever
called
so there might
in fact
be layers to the experience
history
and story
and yet we put them altogether
on church lawns
all the characters
in what we call
Nativity
because that’s what it is
a fancy word
for birth
fancy enough
for shepherds and for monarchs
(not meaning butterflies)
angels
and animals we say
could talk at midnight
and that’s the thing
I guess
each one is unique
and they all
come together
with the single purpose of
welcoming
the Christ-child to the world
of people
and animals
and now
c l couch
photo by Patti Black on Unsplash
Twelfth Night or
(6 January)
What You Will
A modest title
For a late, great play
Did he mean the pun about
His name?
What you will, Will
Will who was not the starving
Artist or
Unknown in his time
It is twelfth night
Or the twelfth day of Christmas
Christmas, in fact, in the east
In may (and maybe your) liturgical
Calendar, Epiphany
In some parts I know, there will be
A boar’s head festival
A Christian way to say
We remember our English
And European roots
Deep down as they might be
Unseen for an age
What is epiphanous today is
What is found and realized in the
Christ story
The magi come to visit with the family
Of Joseph
To leave gifts for the child who
They discover is
The one they were searching for
The sky was writing them about
That was the ink
They were the page
The message now fulfilled
No return to Herod
The last part
There are other matters of
New knowledge in new light
Years after,
He comes to his cousin John
Whose voice speaks to
The wildness in the wilderness
He splits the world in truth
Those who will believe the one
Those who will believe the other
A parable one day applies
Of sheep and goats
Repent
Turn around
Follow his way,
Says he of the one he must baptize
Because deep knowing says they must
Do this
A dove descends
The Spirit is involved
To have a litany of three
Whose echoes elicited the start
Of everything from nothing
What happened to the gifts
Sometimes I wonder
Over-obsessed, they would become a movie
Like the subjects of both arks
And a spear of destiny
Maybe they were covered in a box kept by his mother
As was her way
To have her son and all that followed, after
The season before the season
An ending and beginning
It truly is
A new year
Time for decisions
Whom to follow
In the drama that our forms reflect
The play between all things
The material our due
The cosmos in the universe
Play on
C L Couch
Andrew Atzert from Mesa, AZ, USA – Family of DovesUploaded by Snowmanradio, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11044215
A Mourning Dove parent with two chicks in Mesa, Arizona, USA.
Epiphany
Epiphany. Twelfth Night. The magi come upon the infant Jesus at his family’s home. They are amazed. They give gifts. A tribute.
Epiphany means discovery. An ordinary act that brings new insight to life. The magi, I imagine, were not ordinary people, though what they did was hardly unusual. Many traveled land to land and town to town back when. The caravans were living roads to make trade and civilization possible.
They are not the only ones who had read and studied the stars to find alternative direction. Astrology, astronomy. They were blurred pursuits in this region of the past. There was meaning in the sky. The seasons brought us learning there. We looked for all these.
But when these magic persons, in their learn(ed) wisdom of the world, travel west at last to find this child at home, sameness leaves their lives and all the worlds’. Forever.
What did they discover? What was realized? They beheld a person who meant change.
How so? Two thousand years and some, we still ask.
clcouch123 
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