Robert Wagner Poet Free verse

Notes About The Poem

This poem is the third poem from a set of 4 poems entitled "Three Christmas Poems and an Anniversary Poem on the Cusp of Christmas."  It is from a collection of poems I have entitled: The Book of Ruth: Courting Into Twilight". The poems is directed to my wife, Ruth, who worked for many years, many of those years full-time night shift, as a registered nurse at nursing homes. I have justs retired from 42 years of church ministry, and wa remembeirng come home in the middle of the night from Christmas Midnight Masses to sleep several hours before getting up and doing the Masses on Christmas Day.

The Third Christmas Poem

Two in the morning,
and the long drive home
from an afternoon and night
of Christmas Eve liturgies,
the air is bitterly cold
as my car and I climb
the long, steep hill out of
the Minnesota River Valley of Tears
to our home fifteen minutes away.

Dreams of our warm bed,
and three hours of sleep,
before awakening and
doing it all over again,
dominate my thoughts 
during the long drive home.

I think of you at work
in the nursing home,
watching over the residents
in your care, as the shepherds
once watched over their flocks
in the deepness darkness of night
in Palestine over two thousand years ago.

As I reach the crest of the hill,
and climb out on the barren plateau,
the light from the full moon
glistens off the frozen surface
of snow covered corn fields.
The moonlight reflecting off the snow
is as bright as the light of a noon day sun.

Enraptured by this brilliant light
high on the frozen plateau,
I turn off my headlights
and drive only by the moonlight,
experiencing the epiphany
of the Magi, as they traveled
by a similar light from 
the Star of Bethlehem.

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