Three score and sixteen years ago
A Father and a Mom brought forth
A baby boy into the world, or so
The story goes, for what it’s worth.
They wrapped the babe in flour sacks,
To hide the print they used the backs,
And laid him in the box the Silvertone
Came in. And in so far as can be shown
By anyone who could have known
He was conceived the usual way.
If not, I’ve not heard anyone say.
The neighbors, they’d have known for sure
And they’d have passed it on for sure.
No virgin births for me,
I want a Father I can see,
Is what they say he said
As he lay in his birthing bed.
The night when he was born, so far
As anyone could see, no bright new star
Showed up above them in the sky,
No strangers on the road stopped by
To see the little chap, no gifts
Or any other thing that lifts
His birth above the ordinary,
Nothing to suggest the strangers tarry
[If indeed they had dropped by].
No angels sang or otherwise harked upon it.
No one at the paper in the nearby town
Saw fit to write it up or down
Or otherwise remarked upon it.
Just an entry in the Book,
The family Bible. Otherwise don’t look
For any mention of my pedigree.
Except perhaps if you should Google me
[As I have done a time or two],
A line or two below my name for you
To scan may come up from the maw. But don’t
Expect to be impressed; you won’t
Be. Nothing like a Holy War to make
One’s name or hang around one’s neck
[Or be hung for], no speech one writes
In pencil on the back side of a letter
Traveling to the site, designed to take
The Art of Rhetoric to new heights,
The likes of which have not been heard
Or seen before or after. Heck,
I doubt if Shakespeare could’ve done it better,
Piled the weight as high on every word
And kept the count as low. No cabin, just a shack
To be born in, no bleached blonde hair, no sweater
To fill out so splendidly. The place, like many others,
Sent its fathers, friends, and brothers
Off to fight a war its leaders got them in,
A war in which a lot of men
Got sacrificed for God knows what
When they might well have walked
Away, come back another day and talked
About the reasons why the two should not
Divide, and then have talked some more
About what came between them, tore
The two apart, how to get back
Together, to be one again.
Then there would not have been a war.
There’d not have been a place in history or
The fame He’d set his heart on as a kid.
He’d not have said and done the things He did,
He would have done an even greater thing
By doing what He didn’t do, by reasoning.
Draft 2 26 feb 09 3 mar 4 11 12 20 fri d fulgham