THREE
POEMS ON THE OCCASION OF LUKE’S THIRTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY
Nine
months of anticipation
fills
a soul with expectation,
mundane
laden days, yet
the
unknown lurks setting
life
on edge, a subtle
anxiety
lying underneath a
veneer
of placid calm.
The
due date passing, no
water
breaking, one,
two,
three weeks waiting,
hot
weather settling in,
eighty,
ninety, a hundred
degrees,
humidity rising
we
are all a-boiling, no
one
more so than you
both
within and without.
We
make our way
to
the Windom hospital,
the
long wait over,
a
petocin drip, you and
I,
and the I.V. pole
walking
up and down
the
hospital corridor
outside
the delivery room,
a
path worn into the
linoleum
as we try to
construct
words from
Maintenance
and Linen
Closet
hanging from
the
doors, all the while
gut
crushing contractions
rack
your body, hard
jolts
attempting to stir
the
baby into action.
Eight
long hours of
walking
and waiting,
nothing
to show but
your
swollen ankles,
tired
feet, and a sore gut
for
all the effort. We head
back
to our car baking
in
the summer sunlight,
thankful
for the white
interior
and drive home
defeated
by a fetus.
This
child of ours lives
certainly
not by our
schedule
of time
but
one known only
to
God and to itself.
With
birth still awaiting,
three
weeks ahead, a
harbinger
of future life.
©
2015. The Book Of Ruth, Deacon Bob Wagner OFS. All rights reserved.
2.
BORN
TO THE FARM
How
is it that when
you
opened your legs
and
heard the word,
“Push!”,
the baby
emptied
not from
your
womb into the
hands
of the doctor,
but
seemingly onto
the
seat of an
Oliver
tractor in the
barnyard
of your father’s
farm
more than a
hundred
miles from the
delivery
room in Windom?
Bestowed
with the
name
of Luke, one
would
think outer
space,
fighting the
Empire
in a galaxy
far,
far away would
be
his future, not
on
the floor playing
with
his Fischer-Price
farm
set with the
green
man, dreaming
about
milking cows
and
bailing hay.
The
“Force” of your
father,
and that of
your
grandfather
is
strong in him,
flowing
through his
veins
as he is perched
high
upon the corn tractor
in
your father’s barnyard,
nothing
pleasing him
more
on a hot, sticky
July
day, than to ride
the
tractor with his
grandpa
through the
pasture
or cultivating
the
corn. A Skywalker
he
is not. An Ahmann
born
he is.
©
2015. The Book Of Ruth, Deacon Bob Wagner OFS. All rights reserved.
3. WHILE
MY GUITAR GENTLY
I
have often wondered
the
fairness of life,
its
capricious nature
heaping
undue burdens
upon
the undeserved and
unsuspecting,
many so
young,
still in the womb
yet
to be born. The psalmist
writes
that God knows
our
name prior to our
conception,
and with all
of
our gifts and troubles
intact,
creates all things
good
in Divine self-image.
And,
so you gave birth
to
our son, Luke, his
infant
eyes seeing yet
unseeing,
his smile and
laugh
a reflection of
the
Divinity present
in
your great love. You
guide
me in my parenting
this
most precious life
through
the tough days of
adolescence
when life
does
it best to silence
his
laugh and hide
his
smile for ever.
One
cannot deny genetic
heritage,
the combined
effect
of two lives joining,
for
that in his body
that
has diminished eyesight
has
not diminished, but
enhanced
and augmented
the
best of you and me.
His
hands reach and
grasp
the neck, his
thumb
brushes across
the
strings, the amplifier
plugged
in, the special
effects
pedal turned on,
the
guitar leaps to life
under
his hands, its
sounds
cascading off
the
walls in his room,
driven
from the heart
beating
within, and,
and
through the floor
boards
below, where
we
sit, immersed and
bathed
in the concert
of
his life, and know
it
is all very good.
©
2015. The Book Of Ruth, Deacon Bob Wagner OFS. All rights reserved.
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