He cast the seed across the wide unknown
upon the broken fields that stretched around;
some sank in soil; some scattered and were blown;
the seed that died lay hid in groaning ground.

His hands grew calloused; tender grew his heart;
the Spirit schooled him through his joy and pain;
his fervent prayers fulfilled their unseen part;
his silent tears sustained the buried grain.

The ache of years has made his steps less sure
among the furrows carved by word and deed;
yet what he sowed in weeping will endure,
and thanks arise for all that God decreed.

        Beneath these fields, the harvest lies concealed,
        till God’s own sons at last stand forth revealed.

Mark A. Green is a retired minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and is a member of the Presbytery of the Mid-Atlantic and attends Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Vienna, Virginia.

*     *     *

Poetry is born of human speech. It is of the essence of being human. The sound of sense and the sense of sound are inextricable from human consciousness and its expression in words. Poetry was formed out of the dust by the finger of God. To suppress the lyrical aspect of life, is to seek to suppress one of its most essential features. The naming of animals by Adam was the first expression of true lyricism as the names reflected the very nature of those being named. The psalms are a fundamental testimony to the centrality of poetry, especially in form of song, in human life. The entire fabric of the created order from the most distant stars to the tiniest flower is the expression of the original Poet who brought all things into existence through the word of his power.

Poetry helps us see the world in greater detail and complexity. It urges us to locate and identify its transcendent referents, as Shakespeare tells it in Midsummer Night’s Dream (lines 12–17),

The poet’s eye, in fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

The Cartouche of the Savior’s Life

Gregory E. Reynolds (1949–)

The cartouche of your stable origin
Holds a double meaning as it framed
Your gentle and lowly earthly ministry
For your origin from eternity famed.

Nothing is more stable than the Covenant
Of Peace framed with the Father in eternity
Past and meted out in the nitty gritty
Of the earthly life you lived as a lambent

Intimation of the ignominious suffering
You would endure, Jesus, more humble
Than your stable incarnation, nailed

As if into dust you would soon tumble
As another disappearing hope of Israel.
But the initial cartouche also featured
Golden royal treasures that presaged
The glory of the soaring rise, pressured

By the ovine purity of the crucified One
Who could not be imprisoned by death,
Envisioned by the angel choir singing
To shepherds at the stable birth bequeathed

To all generations living in the same
Cartouche of dirty humility that framed
Your coming and prophesied a fame
That our fallen folly could not tame.

*     *     *

My Boyhood Christmas

I could not have explained
The magic of this season,
But the enveloping solstice
Darkness cast a shadow of mystery
Over my young life that lingers
To this day, something—dare I
Say it—holy. I would not
Have used or understood
That word, but I understood
That in the early darkness
There was light, something
Good in the air—angels,
Shepherds, magi, and a poor Mary
Bearing a child in a feed trough,
Admired as a king—
The King who would save people
From sin and death, things
About which I knew little.

But for all the tinsel and toys,
Something else shone through,
Even through those trifles—
Hope for something beyond,
Something better than the poverty
Of this worn-out world—oh
I knew little of that, too, but
I sensed a sadness in my
Little life as my uncle died
And my one-time soldier father sometimes
Screamed hopelessly in the night.

So the colored-bulb evergreen
In our living room signaled hope
For something terrifically better—
Which I would one day discover
Is the tree of life, guarded
By a wall of flaming angel swords,
Entered only by the conflagration
Of the cross on which that baby
Celebrated by king’s counselors
And shepherds died as the man

Who was God enfleshed,
Whose sacrifice demolished
The indictment against me,
Which even as a boy I knew
Was ironclad—here was the hope
Of bright resurrection glory.

All this despite the schlock
Of modern Christmas—
Yes, the tinsel and the toys
Pointed to something wonderful
Beyond what I could see as a boy;
And even now as an old man
The muse of melancholy
Calls me to trust the One
Who rides on the wings of the wind—
The way and the truth and the life,
The One who set me free
Through the truth of his
Good news, news that I
Only tasted as a boy at Christmas.

*     *     *

Ornaments of Christmas

The fragrant balsam sent my sense
Of mystery into another sphere,
With ornaments hanging so dense
Among the branches, made to cheer***And hasten joy, bringing recompense
From the sorrows of a dreary year
And yet display such immense
Yuletide cheer to make grief disappear.***Thus, each glass sleigh, grape cluster,
Nutcracker, or orb, painted to enchant,
Draped with glistening tinsel luster
Seemed well designed to decant
The spirit I was meant to muster,
And in my childish way transplant***To a rare imaginary place
Where I thought to see God’s face.