A Father’s
Questions
How can this
be? It seems as if
he gives out
light. Can this be mine –
is he the
child that’s just been born?
I find it
hard to understand
So I ask the
animals –
did you see
what happened?
Why has the
darkness disappeared?
What is this
strange new light?
Has someone
come to visit here
while I was
fast asleep?
Perhaps I’m
still asleep, perhaps
I’ll never
know the reason why
a simple
carpenter dreaming on
imagined
angels flying down
with this
new baby, first born son…
in the dark
before I wake
wondering
what a father is,
then woken
by a feather touch.
What is a
father? I don’t know
everything
seems so long ago.
Of course,
he’s ours
and they are
gone, leaving us
– sleeping
wife and confused old man –
with our
brand-new shining child.
Not much seems to have been written about Joseph.
Nor, come to think of it, the feelings of any new father, presented with
– even confronted by – his new-born child, especially when it’s the first one.
As for Joseph – I'm not sure why he’s an old man. Perhaps
that fits better with the idea that he wasn’t the real father?
Nor am I sure that the documentation actually says that he’s old. But
that’s the conventional way the story’s told and depicted, and right now I’ll
go along with the traditional telling of this tale, accepting the story and not
worrying about ‘truth’ – whether it
really happened.
To be sure, old or young, becoming a father is a strange business.
To start with, the nine months ago event that preceded all this feels a
long time ago – ancient history almost. So much has happened since then. Then
there’s the birth, which he may be involved with, but that’s really about other
people.
All of a sudden, there’s a baby – his baby, he knows that, but as I have
Joseph asking – ‘Can this be mine?’ Does a father – any father – ever ‘own’ a
baby anyway?
It may sound silly to ask where it came from, but every new father’s
left wondering: he feels a sense of the extraordinary – something astonishing
has happened – which could be thought of as little short of miraculous.
Poor old Joseph must have felt exhausted too. He’d have fallen asleep,
no doubt dreamed. Maybe that’s when, or even how, many of the
well-told events in the story took place.
And then the baby, a shiny, brand-new baby, would have woken him up to
a new day, a new world.
Like many babies, his (yes, his) radiated warmth – perhaps even light. No wonder
that this particular bewildered father felt the need to talk, to ask some
questions.
Who was around? No one at the moment, though various assorted people
were to come and go. The silent cattle might well have been as good as any to
turn to.
So there I leave this father with his unanswered questions.
A father not much thought about, being incidental, peripheral, to this (literally)
wonderful story. But a father who being there, must have felt emotionally
confused and full of uncertainties and unknowns.
ReplyDeleteIf I remember correctly
I'm certain there wasn't any tinsel.
Cobwebs, yes, and straw and hay
and animal breath cutting through
the air in great vaporous clouds
unlike the still clear night outside
where the old dog fox's bark
and the frith and wisp of winter
left that large silent star undimmed.
I'm sure there weren't candles.
That one bright star filled the stable
with such a light that each ox
and each ass and all those
sheep and watchful shepherds
were able to bow before the babe
without upstaging the Angel
of the Lord in all its glory.
I saw no mistletoe, no halls decked,
and no scent of pine to override
the comforting bedding smells
of that small stable’s inmates.
There were no bells to ring out wildly.
Only the intimate hush of shifting
hooves brushing through deep litter
to break that awed, hallowed silence.
No mince pies either; nor carolers
standing out in the snow though
I did hear occasional bovine lowing,
and saw an abundance of foreign kings,
their milling camels adorned in tassels,
and the woman, the sore-footed man,
and the newly born child all alert
to day's dawning as the cock crowed.