“Christ-hymn” by Sandra R. Duguid (poem)

---

O You!
You tiny who
Of Simeons song
You shepherds shock
You singular star-bright

You student 
Shunning company
And travel
For scholars light.

Just apprentice
Of your mothers husband
True measurer
And leveler
And line

Authoritative voice
Enlisting aid
Selector
And selected
And Divine.

Creative host
Of weddings, picnics, graves
Most social
And uncelebrated
Friend

You thoughtful martyr
You thirsty man
You dying God—

I hoped!
But this concludes . . . 
                                       Amen. Amen. 

O
Heir of power
Crasher
Of closed meetings
The unsummoned
Inviting inspection—

You natural!
You Master
Of surprise.

This poem was originally published in the anthology A Widening Light: Poems on the Incarnation, edited by Luci Shaw, and is used here by permission of the poet.

Sandra R. Duguid (b. 1947) is an American poet living in West Caldwell, New Jersey. For twenty years she taught literature, composition, and creative writing at colleges in the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area and at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania, retiring in 2010 to devote more time to writing. She is a recipient of a Fellowship in Poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and author of the poetry collection Pails Scrubbed Silver (North Star Press, 2013).