I received an invitation to write this poem when Heidi White on The Daily Poem issued a challenge to compose a poem on Saint Nicholas. Having no resistance to such challenges, I took up pencil and composed. Here is my piece -
To Saint Nicholas
Your left hand did not know, good Nicholas,
What wealth your right hand gave.
Munificent extreme
and humbly dark,
Your dexterous style of giving to the poor.
This marks a saint - to see a need,
Not as a glass in which to preen
the plumes of charitable self,
But as a gap to pour
the fullness of a loving heart,
till it be filled and more.
You shunned the world's remembrance,
And so, like sportive children, we remember you.
While you, untouched by all the world can give
of praise or blame,
Receive with unveiled eyes
and longing heart
Your Lord's "Well done."
- AFB, 12-21-21
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| The dowry for the three virgins (Gentile da Fabriano, c. 1425, Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome) |
