A Poem for the Feast Day of the Annunciation

It is the Feast Day of the Annunciation, the day when we celebrate the arrival of the angel Gabriel to Mary.  He greets her and tells her that God has need of her.  She says yes to God's surprising ideas.

Anyone who reads my work or listens to my sermons knows that I don't think this is the only time that God has appeared with an interesting proposal to an individual human.  I believe that God does this all the time, and that all too often, we're too busy or distracted or depressed or done in by grief to even notice that God is there saying, "Hail, oh blessed one.  The Lord is with you."

Years ago I thought about the angel Gabriel and how the mission would change in our current day.  And then I wrote this poem (for more process notes, see this blog post), which was included in the book Annunciation (if you'd like a signed copy of the book, let me know, and we can negotiate a price):

A Girl More Worthy

The angel Gabriel rolls his eyes
at his latest assignment:
a virgin in Miami?
Can such a creature exist?

He goes to the beaches, the design
districts, the glittering buildings
at every boundary.
Just to cover all bases, he checks
the churches but finds no
vessels for the holy inside.

He thinks he’s found her in the developer’s
office, when she offers him coffee, a kind
smile, and a square of cake. But then she instructs
him in how to trick the regulatory
authorities, how to make his income and assets
seem bigger so that he can qualify
for a huge mortgage that he can never repay.


On his way out of town, he thinks he spies
John the Baptist under the Interstate
flyway that takes tourists
to the shore. But so many mutter
about broods of vipers and lost
generations that it’s hard to tell
the prophet from the grump,
the lunatic from the T.V. commentator.

Finally, at the commuter college,
that cradle of the community,
he finds her. He no longer hails
moderns with the standard angel
greetings. Unlike the ancients,
they are not afraid, or perhaps, their fears
are just so different now.


The angel Gabriel says a silent benediction
and then outlines God’s plan.
Mary wonders why Gabriel didn’t go
to Harvard where he might find
a girl more worthy. What has she done
to find God’s favor?

She has submitted
to many a will greater than her own.
Despite a lifetime’s experience
of closed doors and the word no,
she says yes.