! ! And We, Three Kings.. Poem by Michael Shepherd

Before they set out, met
to start their long hard journey from that East,
they knew their tasks, their gifts
to those whose very language, metaphor:

three gifts to speak of soul’s eternal life
about to be refreshed in human life:
gold for the soul’s first task,
resplendent in reflection of All that’s divine;

frankincense, for the soul’s gift to survey
All above and all below as One;
myrrh, that preserves the state and memory
of the passing body, servant of the soul;

these are on their way to Him; horsehooves
now ringing sharp on flint; now sighing into sand;
stars in a velvet winter night
telling of three dominions and cosmographies;

a fortnight’s journey yet to mark the lifetime,
waytime, truthtime, held
in tomorrow’s birth in scent of hay;

divine moment; that in human life must yet hold
an empty cave as tomb; a pile of clothes still warm;
dawnlight on the garden, reflected as from gold;
lingering, the scent of myrrh and frankincense.