The Road To Wonder

Out of the gentle silence of the new year, when the champagne was flat and the paths were all clear,

After the last, dying echoes of the final parties had fled, and the revelers groaned in the comfort of bed,

The indefatigable word bounded from her heavenly throne, looking for somewhere to make herself known.

She didn’t want mansions or a life of soft ease. she chose to thrive and plead and sacrifice—if you please—

In a dark world, full of pain, with a bit of a chill, she laced up her sneakers and headed downhill.

I saw her go by and I lost my poor heart. I threw out my map and my grocery cart.

Instead of a good life, I preferred her instead, (which my mother informed me was “soft in the head”).

I loved her beyond all measure, through thick and through thin, ignoring the neighbors who watched with a grin.

I don’t want to know what else is good in this place, if I can’t have her and her luminous face.

” What is it that banishes sleep from his mind?” you may ask, but her dizzying splendor, making slumber a task!

For while gentle silence enveloped all things, and the stars did their best to look like they had wings.

And night in its swift course was now half gone, before the first coffee or crack of dawn;

Your all-powerful word leapt from heaven, so grand, from the royal throne, into the midst of the land—

The land that was doomed (which is where I reside), with nowhere for a bumbling mortal to hide.

Beyond health and comeliness, I loved her, it’s true, though my mental health check is long overdue.

I chose to have her rather than the light of the sun, because the splendor of her never yields to sleep—not for one!

She’s a marathon runner of celestial grace, setting a rather exhausting, magnificent pace.

She never stops; she always moves, round the clock, while I’m still trying to find a matching clean sock.

Anyone could find her anywhere, so they say— in a library, a puddle, or a stack of fresh hay.

There’s nothing that untainted beauty can’t do, like making a wise man out of a fool like you-know-who.

For Wisdom is mobile beyond all motion, you see. She’s faster than rumors or a panicked honeybee.

She penetrates and pervades all things, high and low, by reason of her purity, everywhere she may go.

She doesn’t do naps and she doesn’t do “slow.” She’s the spark in the silence and the heat in the snow.

So if you’re awake while the rest are all snoring, and you find that “the good life” is actually boring,

Look for the Word that comes leaping and bright, and prepare to stay up for the rest of your life!

• Based on The Book of Wisdom, Chap. 7: 10, 24; 18: 14, 15)