It won't add up

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Poetry list, Christmas

It won't add up

our sums don’t add up
when it comes to mystery
so when infinity leaps
into human years
the material world
uninformed by the spiritual
can’t cope

yet the Bethlehem birth
contracts everything
into the love and promise
of a baby
and expands our horizons
and possibilities
beyond all reckoning
and imagining

but it doesn’t stop there

it subverts all power
and every human choice
and value

seeing the same world
changing and growing
by love and purpose
means yielding and
dying
to belong to the realm
of which we are
neither creator nor controller
only inheritor

the Bethlehem gift
just doesn’t figure
for the powerful and mighty
for if we receive it
we find our world
invaded, taxed and
displaced from home
there is nowhere to stay
and we will have to flee
and innocents will die

you can’t make this up
when love is a brother
and dies before you
and for you
to take us all where
nothing figures
but truth and peace
and justice
and joy and love
his hand reaches out:
take it

© Neil Thompson 2021