Undeserved Giftedness

UNDESERVED GIFTEDNESS

It happened on an early November night

With plenty of frost on the grass,

My parents made love.

A ripe egg was waiting form my father's sperm,]

And, suddenly, presto! there was new life

In the universe, encased in one small cell

Which immediately

began to multiply and grow.

I was soon anchored,

-snug to be fed  for the next nine months.

Hundreds, thousands, then millions of

Replications of the original one celled organism

proceeded, each with a diverse destiny,

Most carefully engineered

by my new and unique DNA.

By Christmas of 1928, in only six weeks,

my tiny heart

Could be heard beating,

to help me grow.

I must have known by

my mother's new awareness

That my heart would ever be moved

by the sounds of Christmas,

that I would always be fascinated by

the season of Advent

writing Advent poems

for half a century.

Occasionally,

a rogue cell took off, wild and untamed,

But my alert DNA sent out

 a guerilla fighter cell

to eat and destroy it.

Miraculously, I was born

healthy with some

Ten billion healthy cells,

to be marked only

By big ears.

"The better to hear you with" said the fox.

To become

A professional listener.

Billions of replications have to occur, each

At the right time

 and begin something new well.

--A nose, an ear, a liver, a brain,

It does not always happen

that way. With some--

One out of twenty babies

some rogue cell

Was not captured and destroyed,

 --a missed opportunity

By one DNA program-filter.

I was born July 12, 1929,

healthy and helpless

Needing my mother's

loving care immediately,

Soon replaced as her single focus

by four sisters

In the next six years.

By the time I was born, billions of cells

Did what they were supposed to do.

I had no agency.

I did not deserve any of it.

A female gift met a male gift,

A mother and a father were created,

And here, incredibly, am I,

Undeserved giftedness to the world,

To my world. Noblesse Oblige.

Recipient of so much

Undeserved giftedness,

I must give back.

There exists no one just

Like you or me in the universe.

How did we happen to meet?

Neither of us

Had to happen yet

We did.

And here we are!

There is no gift like

The gift of life.

Noblesse Oblige.

Celebrate it:

-Raise a glass:

"La Cheim!" (to life!)

(Jewish greeting).

Paschal Bernard Baute,

Advent, 2015.