Member-only story
POETRY
Shepherds
In those days
when emperors considered themselves divine
lording their power, booting greedily over
land they cleared first with swords
when standards leaned so far toward
anything goes that everything was
permitted, as long as you paid your taxes
and hailed caesar, in those days
something happened that the crack pots
and misfits had been talking about
for a long time, but most ears
were too stuffed with the cotton
of comfortable indifference to hear it anymore
No wonder
when the power people liked to forget
chose to squeeze Himself into our little lives
when the sky cracked open
in a blast of joy I can barely imagine
but love to think about
No wonder
it was a band of marginalized misfits
who got to hear the welcoming chorus
while the worldly powers gagged and snored
in their half drunken smugness
the people they cared about least became first
