And The Daisy Cast Its Shadow (For Mother Teresa) Poem by Anita Shanti Joseph

Never mind there’s a daisy on my sleeves
It’s my mother’s heart
I take it with a stride
And smile away my hurt with pride
It cast its shadow on every orphan urchin
Those found not even in the margin of life
Overlooked, side-stepped and soiled like filthy rags
Do such dregs matter to our lot?
They don’t need powder-puff to touch up before a crowd
Nor seek floodlights to be focused on
Mother Teresa stood too plain for the Nobel treat
To love it’s got to hurt she spoke
Her stooped shoulders should have crushed the hearts!
Such glare backlights our smug looks
Wallowing in our own delights and projects
Love’s song grows sweeter in the dark
As it consumes our very being and diminishes us
Burning ourselves to cherish His will and others’
We must go unnoticed like the wayward flowers.
Do I ask then – in pert arrogance/innocence
God does not rest in poverty?
Have these not made Him their centre yet,
Jesus the Saviour of the World?
What doubts assail me if I throw myself
To protect these wayside simple daisies?
With countless clustered seeds centred in their breasts
Breaking smiles, bleeding lips of pain and hunger
Stoop to take a close look into those vacant eyes
What spears can pierce our souls better?
How brave they stand trampled by high-minded
Pharisees
Who lunch in their own gardens with exotic kind
Tempered with right sunshine and rain
Closely fenced and fussed about
What does it matter outside our gardens?
We dare not open our windows wide
It may draw in the dust and cold draft
And soil our paved paths!
What do I ask my Lord on Judgement Day?
Whose side do I take right or wrong
In His garden we not only embrace
The poverty of our souls
But remove fences from our minds and hearts
Throwing ourselves in unheeded service and love
We must gather every hungry sheep and feed till the last
In every widow, orphan and fatherless
Desecrated and deserted life
He is the central theme!
Celebrate in the victory; we are called to part take in His
blood
So each to His buttonhole a daisy must bring
That for ever precious he will wear with a smile
Is it, then, too hard to believe
His heart is ever there
Outside in the manger in the cold and frost?
It was his cradle of birth – The Message of Joy
We dare not touch His softest corner
Can all drink from the same cup
Nor wear the thorn and joke a crown!
Love squeezes every drop of blood
From our very hearts within
It may flow outside gushing forthright uninvited
In little mangers a light always burns
Waiting, inviting His return in hope
It’s all they have – His comfort!