Editor’s Note on “The Magi:”
A dear friend recently confided that she loves the Season of Epiphany (beginning in early January) but secretly dreads its first Sunday. Just as Christmas is neatly tucked away, her church musters up one last pageant to remember the Magi. Far from the orchestrated order and beauty of Advent’s Nativity scenes, this one is unrehearsed and bedraggled. There is nothing neat or tidy here as children stumble down the aisle in oversized costumes, unsure of where to go. And yet, perhaps this was not so unlike the original scene: As revelation hung in the sky, Wise Men from a distant land looked up with confounded awe, and still chose to chase down hope. May Laura’s poignant words here in this season leads us to ponder, “Would we too?”
-Nichole Woo, for The Mudroom
The Magi
Were there wives who wept in doorways?
Children grasping the knees
of beloved fathers who loaded up camels,
loaded up years, loaded up—what?
What would drive a man to madness,
to break the hearts of all he loved,
to leave a job, a home, a name, all
for the sake of a pin-prick of light
that wasn’t in the sky the night before
but now shone bright amongst the Sisters
and Dippers—or did it?—or was it only
a trick of the eye, this wild night sky
that changed itself at each revolution?
Would it stay in its place or dive to the sea?
They would chase it to the grave either way
for such is the costly sadness of hope.
- The Magi - January 25, 2020
- In Like a Lion - April 30, 2019