This was a new one on me – when we went to the service at Overton last Sunday morning, we were all invited to dress up as a character from the nativity story, ready to act out our various parts. The church gradually filled with shepherds, angels and more … but the poem tells the rest of the story! And by the way, for those pedantic apostrophe-watchers, when you write the plural of a name like Mary or Joseph, you have to use an apostrophe. I know. I checked.
The D.I.Y. Nativity
The D.I.Y. Nativity,
A very curious thing:
A score of shepherds listening
To random angels sing;
Those angels all line-dancing
Most reluctantly,
(Their ages probably ranging
From three to seventy-three);
A dozen Mary’s dressed in blue
All quite serenely vow
To bear the holy Son of God
(We really wonder how?);
A dozen matching Joseph’s,
Some large, some very small,
With tea-towels on their heads,
Agreeing to it all;
One Mary has a baby,
A tiny, dark-haired boy,
(And everyone agrees that
It is certainly not a toy);
Twitching through his three-week dreams
In slumber soft and deep,
(Not even dancing angels
Stir him from his sleep).
Up march the group of stately kings,
Their cross-eyed camel heads
Attached (well, more or less) to sticks
They hold between their legs.
My father comes as one of these
Dressed up in gold of course,
(His camel noises really sound
A lot more like a horse);
And when they reach the chancel,
These wise women and men,
They bow their white-haired heads before
The Babe of Bethlehem.
Except for one (the one I know),
That old one over there,
Who bends a wobbly knee and holds
His pose as if in prayer.
To my surprise, tears flood my eyes
To see my father so,
I seem to see the future,
And without doubt I know
That one day, when he leaves us,
This is where he’ll be,
Before the Lord, the King of Kings,
On humbly bended knee.
