Category Archives: Poetry

Verse – Christmas: a Donkey’s Tale

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Hee Haw

Burro's ears

Burro’s ears

“Just put the burro here,” he said,
“She’ll calm the horses of the folks
inside the inn.”  And so they tied
me to the pole above the trough.

I was surprised he later led
a man and girl into the stall
and pointing to the straw, he said,
“Sleep here,  this simple space is all
that’s left tonight, and if the child
is born the cries won’t wake the guests.”

He grimaced, but she somehow smiled
and sank down to the ground.  Their rests
did not last long.  Her labor soon
began and then the baby, wrapped
and warm, was laid under the moon
light bright where we, the stock, were trapped
and fed.  I brayed when shepherds dumb
barged in and said a king had come…

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Dec. 11, 2012

Verse – Christmas Re-Imagined

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INTRO: How strangely idyllic Jesus’s birth appears in Matthew. No mention of the absence of a midwife, stench, or unsanitary conditions. The animals were the only neighbors, including the goats and sheep of Matthew’s parable of the Last Judgment, and as I have re-imagined it, the serpent who would bruise humanity’s heel in Genesis 3:8-15.

All the midwives were busy that night
when goats and sheep butted and
bleated for a taste of the after-birth
while a hapless not-quiet-husband
knelt beside his not-yet-wife Mary,
confused by having to birth this
child of another he’d never met,
a lamb she said was meant to be
for reasons he could not feel or see.

No Star Wars star shone above
a forgotten place the three of them
shared with none but bulls and
cows, hens and roosters, a snake
slithering through the straw toward
the donkey’s heel, the goats on
his right, the sheep on his left,
before the angels said the baby’d
come to bruise the serpent’s head.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Dec. 27, 2015

Verse – December Rain and Reign

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Trinity Episcopal Church ExcelsiorSome Sundays, like last Sunday, I just don’t feel like going to church. The weather was depressing. I was feeling kind of down. But we went, Kay and I.

After going to church, I wrote this piece. A poet I am not. Steve’s the poet of Views from the Edge. But, hey, he’s a very forgiving guy. Hope you are, too.

Advent Rain – Christmas Reign

harvest-being-2014-051In drizzling rain under
sullen gray-chilled skies
we trudge to church as
through a Scottish moor –
neither fall nor winter,
a gloomy in between
when spring’s bright
hope seems dead as
days are dark and short –
on the way toward
a reign in Bethlehem.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Dec, 15, 2015

Verse on the first Christmas

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“No Christians Were There”

No Christians were there at the birth
of Jesus. (For “…disciples were
first called Christians in Antioch”
years later.) But were those who were
there believers? the shepherds, the wise
astrologers, the non-father,
the Blessed mother? Did they see
with eyes of faith, or more like we
do: wonder, ponder, doubt and stare
at the small baby stabled there…?

That three were Jews, we know for sure.
The genealogies we read
in Matthew, Luke, go back as far
as Abraham. Eight days, we read,
then circumcision for the babe.
The Arab wise guys may be from
the land we call Iran. The sheep
herders may have been aliens
in the land illegally: cheap
pay for smelly foreigners.

The barn contained no royalty–
the stock had better pedigree…
and yet some say a King was born
to poor folks that the rich would scorn…

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Dec. 21, 2013

Birthday Tribute to Steve

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Kate Shoemaker, MD, and her Uncle Steve Shoemaker share the same birthday – today, December 19. Kate sent this to Steve today. Kate, from St. Louis, MO, is spending the day with Steve and Nadja in Urbana, IL.

Happy Birthday poem from Kate Shoemaker to Uncle Steve.

Happy Birthday poem from Kate Shoemaker to Uncle Steve.

O Radix, A Third Advent Reflection and Sonnet

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We’re pleased to re-blog Malcolm Guite’s poem “O Radix“[Latin for Root], a movement from “the surface of the wide-world screen” to “the forgotten root…of every living thing.”

malcolmguite's avatarMalcolm Guite

https://lanciaesmith.com/image-for-the-day-advent/ https://lanciaesmith.com/image-for-the-day-advent/ The third Advent antiphon,inmy Advent Anthology fromCanterbury PressWaiting on the Word, O Radix, calls on Christ as the root, an image I find particularly compelling and helpful. The collect is referring to the image of he ‘tree of Jesse the family tree which leads to David, and ultimately to Christ as the ‘son of David, but for me the title radix, goes deeper, as a good root should. It goes deep down into the ground of our being, the good soil of creation. God in Christ, is I believe, the root of all goodness, wherever it is found and in whatsoever culture, or with whatever names it fruits and flowers, a sound tree cannot bear bad fruit said Christ, who also said, I am the vine, you are the branches. I have tried to express some of my feelings for Christ as root and vine more…

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O Adonai, a second Advent reflection and sonnet

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Malcolm Guite

Malcolm Guite

NOTE: Anglican priest, songwriter and poet poet Malcolm Guite is becoming a favorite of VFTE. His work reflects that playful but profound interplay between the particular and the universal that is poetry’s great gift. Here’s Malcolm’s post for today.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Dec. 18, 2015. Malcolm writes from Cambridge, England. Click the link:

O Adonai, a second Advent reflection and sonnet

Verse – Am I Dying?

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Well, certainly sometime…
but I mean, am I dying soon?
like before my next birthday…
or even before I get to make love again…
(and these days, at my advanced age,
that might well be AFTER my next b- day),
and is that a good sign, or a bad sign?

Energy is low, even after I stopped my statins,
(which one of my five M.D.s says increases
an elderly male’s risk of a heart attack)
–btw, having 5 Docs is certainly a sign
of one’s impending demise.

All of my doctors are younger than I am.
Two of my doctors are younger
than my youngest child.
The ages given of the newly dead
in my local paper’s obits are half
older, half younger than I am, usually.

I am writing more verses than ever,
but fewer sonnets–am I preferring
free verse because it is faster?
Am I desperate to say what I have to say
before I can no longer think or speak?

There are times now I can no longer
see the grid of streets (as if from above)
in my home town. I make more wrong turns.
My dreams are more memorable than
many conversations. Nightmares
are more frequent–nightSTALLIONS
chase me till the dawn.

If death is like sleep, will I ever
really rest in peace?

  • Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, written May, 2014, Published on Views from the Edge Dec. 15, 2015.

NOTE TO READERS: Steve has been diagnosed with a painful terminal cancer. They say people die the way they’ve lived. Steve is typically forthright about his condition. “I’m dying,” he says, as a simple matter of fact. As readers saw in his post about making sure the chair was there before you sit and the window open before your spit, his sense of humor is strong as ever. The size and length of his spirit exceeds his height of 6’8″ and his sleeve length. Would that we might all learn to die with dignity, grace, and humor.

 

Annals of Aging, # 487

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A chair should be there BEFORE I sit,
I should roll down the window BEFORE I spit,
But because I am old,
I am frequently told:
“You know we all think you’re just a HALF-WIT!

  • Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Dec. 14, 2015

Link

“I cannot think unless I have been thought,
Nor can I speak unless I have been spoken….”

Opening lines of “O Sapientia” by Malcolm Guite.

Click  Advent in Music, Poetry, and Steve Bell’s Pilgrim Year, sit back, and enjoy the beauty of the poetry.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, Dec. 13, 2015