But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. – Luke 2:19

Treasuries, they say, are filled with gold.
The mansions of the powerful protect the rooms
whose contents build the edifices which enclose them.

A treasury, they tell me, is the due of you, dear child,
a message from the heavens (though it strangely smells of sheep),
and so I lay your well-wrapped form in straw.

An angel spoke to me, he did, and told me not to fear.
I thought his greeting odd, but much odder was his word,
to tell me that I would become the mother of a King.

A mother I’ve become, but what royal babe is so
conceived to summon those suspicious eyes?
They’ve followed me for months, though not to Bethlehem.

A mother I’ve become, as witnessed by my groans and pains,
by midwife, by my worried Joseph, by the ox
whose manger I’ve now stolen for my infant’s bed.

The bloodied rags have vanished, whisked away
by midwife’s hands. I tell you, it is hard to hold
to memories of angels as a child crowns.

They came, then, those poor wanderers of the fields,
abandoning their flocks by night to see a child
in a manger. A child. A Savior. A Messiah King.

They spoke of angels singing in the skies,
they spoke of glory shining all around them, and
they spoke of peace, God’s peace, for all.

In honesty, I’d like to know the reason that
the angels sang to shepherds, not to me, this night,
since Gabriel’s words have faded in this place.

I’d like to hear the angel once again assure me that
the treasury of royalty will be my son’s someday,
that he will grow and thrive and save and rule.

For now I must content myself with angels’ echoes
in the voices of the poor. For now I must content
myself with pondering their words within my heart.

An inn without a room. A stable and a manger.
Angels’ voices echoed. Son, your treasury tonight
contains no gold. Instead, it is your mother’s heart.

A poem/prayer based on Luke 20:1-20, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel Reading for Year A, the Nativity of the Lord (Proper I).

The image is The Birth of Jesus with Shepherds. JESUS MAFA. The birth of Jesus with shepherds, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48387 [retrieved December 22, 2022]. Original source: http://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr (contact page: https://www.librairie-emmanuel.fr/contact).