We Are Gifts To Be Given

We are gifts to be given

Not like pretty ribbon-red wrapped boxes

Sacrificed to fingers tearing, joyful, laughing

Nor as does time present the spring

With never failing newness

Not like some long dormant 

Encapsulated chrysalis awakening 

To dry its rainbow stained 

Panes in the summer heat

Not with any slow, kind, calm, 

Unshaken giving shall we meet

Rather like the Phoenix shall the Christus 

From our own ashes rise

Ought fire, pain, and death, immolation, holocaust

Come as some surprise to us who've known

The God of little lambs made tigers burning too

Yet calls them all His own

In anguish then when of all tenderness bereft

Know the beauty of love

Like the angel of death

Can be terrible

And swift

c 1965 J. S. Manista