Joseph – a nativity poem

They say there are signs.
Not with her.

I’m no professor
but neither am I stupid.

I asked her who she’d been seeing.
She sat there murmuring ‘Angel’.

She went north a few days
- change’ll do you good.

The solicitors said to forget it.
‘Without proof…’ they smiled.

If anything she started to brighten:
‘They’ll be cousins, same age!’

(I can’t be sure,
but I think I saw him, too.)

We left it too late, of course.
The traffic was solid,

some pop idol on the hire car radio
massacring ‘Hallelujah’.

We stopped at a Little Chef
on a B-road somewhere in the hills.

Crystal midnight it was,
good as daylight.

Then she grew wild-eyed.
Her bawling, a blunt saw,

cut through me.
It wasn’t like in the songs.

Wonderful poem by Anthony Wilson. This is part of a series of poems written for a nativity carol service.