Happy Birthday, Mary!

I light a candle as a birthday gift,
September 8th, the day that you were born,
I add a simple prayer sent far and swift,
a dewdrop as you bloom this early morn.

Nine months ago we saw you as conceived,
December 8th’s Immaculate Conception,
a doctrine we’d for centuries believed,
our tainted nature’s boastful sole exception.*

That date’s a Holy Day of Obligation,
your birthday’s mere celebratory feast,
you show our view, by this clear designation,
of life’s conception over birth increased.

Should not our joy at Christmastime bow to
the day Christ was conceived and born in you?

* Refering to a line in Wordsworth’s The Virgin:
“Our tainted nature’s solitary boast.”

                        by Pete Voelz      9/7/13