"Nativity" is my first recorded poem. It was written on a beautiful Spring day in 1955, when I was 17, as I sat leaning against an earth mover in an open field and petals from flowers in a nearby tree fluttered around me in a warm Spring breeze. I sent a copy of the poem to my sister, Mary. In those days you typed one letter after another and hoped for the best. The original of the poem was lost and forgotten, but shortly before Mary's death from lung cancer at the Abbey of Regina Laudis, Mary sent me a copy of the poem I had given her so many years before. I miss her very much. Published June 2005 in Coffee Press Journal, copyright J. Donald Coonrod.

I searched in a glistening dream
for gardens lush with shade,
and blossoms carried in the wind,
grasses greener than the gods had
made; love from deep within the
earth, immortal love and deathless
birth.

I sought some pattern in the ways,
as yet unwritten by the days
that formed Creation in the past,
from rustling beauty of the winds
and smiles and tears man attends.

I searched black loam and sparkling
sands for seeds grown warm and
sprouting green, from tears that run
in verdant lands—souls eternity
cannot transcend nor perish like the
lives of men.