A Long Walk Toward God

By Bryant Burroughs

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Creator of the stars at night, your people’s everlasting light
              St. Ambrose

Come, you three, follow me
to a space you do not know.
A child conceived with no man,
God sparking himself in her womb.
Angels sing and shepherds run
to marvel at this child.
You three, hurry, come and marvel.

I, Caspar, follow this strange star
that shines and moves
as if its very motion declares
a coming moment in which we must attend.
Are we following, or is it pulling us?
It curves close and near
as if it has secrets to tell.
I listen half-expecting it to speak,
for it knows more than we do.

I, Melchior, follow in fear
this poem of God
writ large with light.
How will we hear the unhearable?
How will we learn the unknowable?
Who am I to know such secrets?
Yet the poem holds the very secrets
for which my soul yearns.
We hear a rumor of God come near,
stepping from behind his house of light.

I, Balthasar, walk in step with this star,
made in the earliest of days
when God clothed the void with light.
Now it leads us, a fire in the desert,
blazing as in the old stories,
a lantern of God dazzling the sky
and shooting hope into our hearts.
We hear a rumor of a God who visits,
a God come near.

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Bryant Burroughs is a writer and lives with his wife Ruth in Upstate South Carolina with their three cats. His work has appeared in online literary sites such as Agape Review, Clayjar Review, Pure in Heart Stories and Faith, Hope & Fiction.

Bryant's other work on Foreshadow:
The Widow Whose Son Lived (Fiction, July 2022)
The Youngest Day (Poetry, November 2022)
The Widow's Psalm (Poetry, February 2023)
The Leper and the Healer (Fiction, May 2023)
Pearls of Ignatius (Poetry, August 2023)