What was Joseph Doing When Mary was Conceived?

Immaculate Conception, José Claudio Antolinez, 1635-1676

What was Joseph doing

When Mary was conceived?

Was he sanding some wood?

Crafting in the temple?

Laying asleep in bed,

Dreams rushing through his head?

Did he know that his wife

Had risen like the dawn?

That his destined best half

Had fallen like the dew

On earth’s dry arid grass?

She the spotless and pure

Who would make the Unseen,

Seen in her flesh bestowed.

Had he have known at all

Yes, he would have believed,

But later on he knew –

She was immaculately conceived.

Old Israel sighed and heaved

With elation and smile,

And all the prophets ‘neath –

Patriarchs, matriarchs,

The righteous pagans-dead,

And all the just rejoiced:

“Dawn has come, Spring is here,

Soon shall come Rising Sun

The Lamb whose David’s Son,

Who’ll open up the gates

Through she in whom His heel

Already crushes eel:

Moses New, Promised One –

The Joshua we’ve sought

Whose blood this Ewe has bought

As first fruit of First Fruit

That rose, not fell from tree,

Which all alike will free,

Tearing from Egypt’s breast,

And who’ll lead us onward

To that land Abraham was bequest.”

This hymn of limbo’s blest

Sung as Ann and Jo’chim

Beneath the shining gate

Embraced in faith of child,

Was heard not by Joseph

But vaguely did he feel,

Deep within and so real,

All the yearnings of them

At once in yearning his

For Messias, his kin –

A shoot of Jesse’s stem.

And yet at once in heart

An ocean swelled and roared:

Joy that no man had known,

For his deepest own self –

The aurora of God –

Embraced and held most fast

He the First and the Last,

And she the Dawn now cast;

For ev’n though alone:

No wife, no child his own,

And chaste vow set in stone,

On that morn, eve or night

When Mary entered world,

Inside he held – delight! –

The woman and the child

Whom one day in a dream

He’d be told to carry

Safely into Egypt’s

Wasteland, a refugee,

Where eventually

Mary would wean from breast

The child whom He would serve faithfully.

So doing what was he

When Mary was conceived?

Adoring the infant

And protecting her seed,

Waiting for its God-shoot,

Without him knowing then

He’d be the one to hold

This immaculate stem

And its Davidic shoot

Which ancient hands and ploughs

Did sweat to see them bloom

But which only Joseph’s toil

Would reap and house: yea now

Secretly in his soul

Where Mary now dwelt

And the Word through grace felt,

But in the flesh as well

When the harvest was ripe,

But for now as Mary

Hid inside blest Ann’s womb,

And Word in high cacoon,

Joseph either worked or

Dreamed, unware that he’d hold them soon.

7/12/2016