Matthew calls them Magi (Shane Liesegang SJ)

Matthew calls them Magi 

Everyone else skips them 

But nobody ever calls them kings 

Or wise men 

We did that 

The later ones 

Who wanted to worship, to follow, 

Who couldn’t imagine foreign wisdom 

Or authority 

That wasn’t a monarch 

Or a man 

How we labor to squeeze God into our box 

But I like to imagine a wise woman 

Decked in filigree and shine 

Who saw a star and knew in her deepest gut 

That something 

Big was happening 

She sailed over sand seas, 

Rough waters, peril on one horizon and hope on the other 

Trusting in the truth of that hope 

To carry her ashore 

Where sat a small unremarkable shelter 

And that itch, the one she couldn’t describe, 

Was finally scratched 

She pushed through a crowd 

Thick with animals and onlookers 

Sure of her destination 

Pulling a gold chain from across her face, 

To delight the babe who laughed as children do 

Anointing him with oil, marking his destiny, 

And setting incense alight so that the stale smell of beasts might be, for the moment, forgotten 

Then, after cradling him and watching his unfocused eyes search her smile, 

She set him down with a brush of lips to forehead 

And came to his mother, 

Exhausted, rejoicing 

These two queens of the universe, 

Embracing in the knowledge 

That in this particular 

Now, 

Now that hope and truth had flesh, 

They could breathe and wonder and fear 

Together

And she stroked the sleeping face 

The labor done, the work beginning 

Looking to the star, she figured she might stay 

--Shane Liesegang, SJ,
The Mágos, a poem 

Image source: Edward Burne-Jones, The Adoration of the Magi, tapestry, https://sparkill.org/2022/01/01/feast-of-the-epiphany-of-our-lord/ 

Poem source