Straight and Narrow
Low o low
came You loving Lord
narrowly birthed and laid
low in a manger–
You, wider than all skies.
Straight the way and narrow
straight the tree
O narrow they nailed You down
narrow as man.
Straight the way and narrow
to sunder tree and rise–
O narrow as Your arms stretched wide
the way to Paradise.
God’s Humor
Some people seem to have a God
Who never smiles, and never laughs.
I wonder about those mournful souls–
what sort of a God has them?
I have a God who’s beamed like sun
and warmed me on the coldest nights
(and chilled me on the warmest days
with his great frown)
and shot my heart with burbling joy
when life was wrack and wreck.
The Disciples must have laughed too:
some people thought they were drunk
at Pentecost, Lord, when all they imbibed
was You.
Some people seem to have a God
Who’s sober all the while.
I have to wonder about a God
Who doesn’t laugh, and doesn’t smile–
what on earth would such a God do
when He’d fashioned the first wagging tail
to finish the first cunning pup
and painted a monkey’s bottom blue?
Lucia Walton Robinson is a born-again Episcopalian. Some of her poems have appeared in The Penwood Review, The Road Not Taken, Split Rock Review, Indiana Voice Journal, <<...>> and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol. VII