A Child Is the Greatest Gift
A child is the greatest gift
That our lives can bestow.
It brings the most exquisite joy
That we will ever know.
Some days deliver happiness,
Far more than we can touch.
We need the help of all our friends
To comprehend how much.
And so we thank you for the gifts,
Both those you brought and are,
That celebrate this rich, full life
And its rising star!
Behold the Mother with Her Newborn Child
Behold the mother with her newborn child!
An icon of a hope that never dies.
Death may label all we cherish lies,
Yet this love lies too deep to be defiled.
We clear an inner field where fate has smiled,
Letting play the pleasures of surmise,
Holding back all contrary replies,
As though our thoughts might turn the winters mild.
Despite the well-known travesties of time,
Each time a child is born we dream anew,
For only thus our losses are regained.
Though we must share the destiny of slime,
No passion in our palette is more true
Than that which cradles innocence unstained.
Creation Is the Proper Form of Love
Creation is the proper form of love,
Opening a universe to being.
Nor is love less than light a lamp for seeing
Glory, as the passing years will prove.
Remember well what service you must render
As laborers in vineyards not your own.
The life that you have made is but on loan,
Unencumbered by what gifts you tender.
Let it then be yours this little while,
And lavish it unstintingly with joy,
The grace no later demons can destroy,
Inheritance no fortune can defile.
Out of who you are comes what you do:
Now be with love and joy for more than two,
So that you may with life new life beguile.
Evidence of Paradise
Evidence of paradise
Veils its rainbowed wings,
Enters life like one of us,
Like spirit wrapped in things.
Yet angels sing in Bethlehem
No more than in Mobile,
And kings careen through Rocky Mount
No less than through Jezreel.
Dream, then, of the bitter wind,
Nights for which one yearns
In sorrow and unsullied joy,
Child on whom life turns,
Older than the universe,
Love haunting, hurting, healing, worse,
An anguished joy one can't reverse
So long as blood still burns.
Hallelujah! I'm Pregnant! Praise the Lord!
Hallelujah! I'm pregnant! Praise the Lord!
For the Lord has quickened my womb! With my husband,
Of course, and Dr. Heller, who quickened the sperm.
Which makes it no less a miracle.
For the Lord has quickened my womb! With my husband
I thank Him and science both, and bless them.
Which makes it no less a miracle
Of the Lord, Who works through the works of our hands.
I thank Him and science both, and bless them.
With science I have but a passing acquaintance.
Of the Lord Who works through the works of our hands,
Of the Lord I sing all the words in my heart!
With science I have but a passing acquaintance,
Of course, and Dr. Heller, who quickened the sperm.
Of the Lord I sing all the words in my heart:
Hallelujah! I'm pregnant! Praise the Lord!
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Thank You for Coming
Thank you for coming,
Holding me dear,
Although you have known me
No more than one year.
Know that I know what
Your words want to say,
Older than sunshine
Upon a new day.
Thank You for Coming
Thank you for coming,
Holding me dear,
Although I'm not born yet,
Nor made myself clear.
Know that I know what
Your gifts want to say,
Older than sunshine
Upon a new day.
Thank You for the Love You've Shown Our Child
Thank you for the love you've shown our child,
However little we two might have shared.
A baby has the right to be adored,
No matter whether we are well prepared,
Knowing without knowing we have smiled.
You're neither walking off nor running scared,
Opening your heart to be beguiled,
Understanding the immense reward.
There Is No Greater Miracle than This
There is no greater miracle than this:
The quickening of flesh within the womb,
Summoning an angel to a kiss.
Ay, me! Again the gist of Genesis:
The gulf of light darts vast against the gloom!
There is no greater miracle than this.
Ay, me! Again the voice of the abyss,
Tailoring the temple to the tomb,
Summoning an angel to a kiss.
The paradox defies analysis:
Soul from sand, sanctity from spume.
There is no greater miracle than this.
Nor ought one such absurdity dismiss:
The rationing of reason to a room,
Summoning an angel to a kiss.
Life walks upon a sea of nothingness,
Eternal in the beauty of its bloom.
There is no greater miracle than this:
Summoning an angel to a kiss.
Why Is It that a Child Makes Life Worthwhile
Why is it that a child makes life worthwhile?
Why is hope with each new birth new born?
What deep remembrance, shadowed in a smile,
Brings back the dream whose measured loss we mourn?
Why do we think that life that is to be
Has greater aptitude for being more,
As if we rose not from the self-same sea
To crash in turn against the self-same shore?
Why do we wrap the best of us in song,
The Eden that we left but never lost,
And try to pass that purer self along,
Not counting risk or reckoning the cost?
I do not know, but know that from my womb
Has come a life whose life makes my life bloom.
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