Annunciation

An Advent Poem

I’ve been spending some time engaged in imaginative contemplation lately, working through the moments leading up to the birth of Christ. Trying to evoke the scenes, depicted so sparingly in scripture, has been an invitation for me to write poetry (something I’ve not done for some time). As we close the season of Advent and move into Christmas, I offer one of those poems, reflecting on Luke 1:26-38, in case it is helpful for your own meditations.

Two peasant women in “The Close of Day” by Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton (1865) Public Domain

Annunciation

It was in the garden, perhaps,
Mary, tending the March ground,
planting the seeds that would
nourish another summer.
The land was hers to till and keep
and she was faithful in her care
obedient to God and ground,
Eve alive again in Eden for a moment.
And it was there,
in the light of sun,
dew burning like incense toward the blue
hanging like a cloak above her,
that the messenger came 
in the radiance of uncreated light,
voice like stream and sparrow,
singing star.
She listened and heard,
all her being answering its yes—
I will bear this seed
like the earth to which my body bends;
I will let this beginning grow
and push up toward the 
giving glow, 
anchored in my skin,
catching holy breath, 
echo of all life.
And he will build and bloom, 
and go to seed,
settling on the fallow ground,
becoming
a harvest of a hundred-fold.