(Editor’s note: As part of our Community Contributors series, we will be publishing poetry. In the past, newspapers routinely published poetry from local authors. We at the Ohio County Monitor wanted to try to reach back into the past and bring the custom back to the present. Below you will find to Christmas poems. We hope you enjoy them.)
A Christmas Beginning
By decree of Rome’s Caesar
A census to take
To town must journey
Register he must make
Joseph Of Nazareth
Bethlehem he’s obligated
From House of David
With Wife Mary child created
Galilee to Judea excursion
Seventy miles to travel
Carrying child on long road
Through dirt and gravel
Three day crossing
Arrive after night
Tired and hungry
Found way by starlight
Nay a guest room open
For the couple you see
Turned away from many
No bed to guarantee
Not a place indoors
Was to be found
Only a corner in a barn
With animals around
Arranged a bed in the hay
How Joseph must have worried
For his young wife with child
Wanting rest in a hurry
In the still of the night
God’s Son soon appeared
Amazed I’m sure
Guarded and Feared
Our baby Jesus was born
Under Bethlehem’s Star
The Newborn King
Seen by wise men afar
No cradle to hold
Our new Lord King
An animal’s food trough
In a manger, our everything
Wise men come
Find the King of Jews
Asking about
Looking for clues
Sent by King Herod
Fear of taking his place
Wise find them
In this unusual space
Dropping to their knees
And bowing their heads
Worship baby Jesus
Our future messiah
Bringing gifts of gold
Frankincense and myrrh
Warned in a dream
Be gone in a blur
Wise men left
Joseph finally sleeps
Visited by an angel
Escape to Egypt take heed
Stayed till King Herod’s death
Another dream Joseph had
Told Travel to Israel
Fear took them to Nazareth instead
A Christmas birth
That happened
So many years ago
Still touches our hearts
Tears are a flow
Prayer to baby Jesus
For it is His night
He since died on the cross
So we have His Rights.
-Luce
