A Joseph's-Eye View of the Nativity on the El Capitan Bethlehem is behind us now. Our faces are set for home. As the El Capitan hurtles Through the dark night Toward Nazareth. The car lights have dimmed, The seats are reclined back, Passengers fitfully doze. Around seats thirty and thirty-two, There is a strange exhalting brightness. Mary's glasses have slipped Farther down her nose; Her weariness lets go its solidity, Melting into the pillow with her head, While on her lap uneasily sleeps A tiny teething Christ-child, Sweaty and flushed of face. It is a handsome scene!-- Tender and sweet, Guarded only by my meditations. Tired as I am, I cannot surrender to sleep My private nativity. Rolling about my brain Aimlessly to the train's rhythmic rocking, My thoughts are of varied and wondrous things: Some are of the past and Magi longings, Most of those advent aches Are lost in the present; In the wonder of past yearnings come true. Others are of the present and the future-- More and more, my mind returns To that vague and shadowy figure, Joseph. What midnight meditations were his As he stood vigil over his sleeping family? Did he puzzle over the mystery Of that strange child Who had suddenly become his? My own long-sought daughter, Stranger though she still is, Shifts restlessly in her sleep. My hand goes out to her. There is no longer a question of whose child is this? Rather what child is this? Her tired little body Is but a container For a life-- Which is a special, A sacred thing-- She is mine. My Christmas has become Easter! The long days of advent waiting are gone. The old life of emptiness has been given up; Those days laid in the tomb This Good Friday evening-- What is to emerge? Across the aisle, The Christ-child Who has given me a new life Lies in my Madonna's lap, While the El Capitan pulls Toward Easter Day and ressurection. ___________________________________________ Forty-three years go, on Good Friday, April 4, 1969, my first wife and I met our daughter, Emily, at O'Hare Airport in Chicago, IL. From there, we took the train to Kansas City, MO. Emily was nine months of age. She had been flown from Korea by the Holt Adoption Agency. Emily was left in a basket on an orphanage doorstep. She was estimated to be only a couple of weeks old and she was very emaciated. At three months, she was assigned to us for adoption. Originally, she was supposed to arrive around Christmas time but she grew very ill and had to be hospitalized and thoroughly cleared to be in good health before she could come to the States. We didn't get her for Christmas, as we had expected, but she did come the following Easter. I have been blessed to be her father for all these years. No man could ask for a better daughter. Good Friday occurs on April 6, this year. Since this is just about the closest to the actual date of April 4, it seemed fitting to share this bit of family history--and my great joy--with you my friends. Thanks for looking and taking the time to read the "poem." The picture was taken by me on the train; the poem was written two days after we got home to Kansas. Jeremy