Of Joseph (Matthew 1)
Aram begat Amminadab,
Amminadab Nahshon,
Prolonged the bloodline set before,
And so forth and so on.
Until they got to Joseph, who
Did not, pray tell, beget;
Something was rather odd about
This girl that he had met.
She turned up pregnant, though the two
Did nothing more than chat;
With child by the Holy Ghost, indeed—
A likely story, that.
He might have thrown an angry fit,
Denounced her to her face;
But he was quite incapable
Of anything so base.
Unwilling to traduce her name,
With modesty content,
He sought to spare this hapless girl
Undue embarrassment.
This Joseph was a grown-up man,
That rare and precious thing,
More gentle than the highly born,
More dignified than kings.
Begetting children is a job
That any fool can do;
It took a man to make the leap
From blood to something new.
It took a man to comprehend
The soul of fatherhood:
Putting the mother and the child
Before some specious good.
He followed the instructions of
An angel in a dream,
Took Mary for his lawful wife,
However things might seem.
A dreamer, as his namesake was,
But not of stars and sheaves.
His dreams were artless, not the sort
Imagination weaves.
Nor did his dreams exhort him to
Some exploit he might dare;
A coat of many colors was
The last thing that he’d wear.
What does an angel look like in a dream?
Like one of us? Or one of us with wings?
Like flame, or frost, or cloud, or storm, or steam?
Joseph knew well but never told,
Guarding God’s confidence.
Divine attention fortified
His native reticence.
This means of revelation was
A private sort of art.
So Joseph kept it secret—more
Discretion on his part.
He promptly did as he was told,
Just bought it, line, bait, hook,
And did what other men would shun,
For fear of how they’d look.
Faith is the senior sib of trust,
Of pure credulity;
The father in this case possessed
The childlike quality.
Joseph, a self-effacing sort,
Would neither rule nor preach;
He dwelt obscurely in a sphere
That angels strain to reach.
