Ordinary time

I took down the Christmas decorations today.
The house looks bare
it's almost as if nothing special ever took place here.
It's just
Ordinary.

The radio plays rock, pop, country, talk, classical, jazz
But no Christmas music anywhere,
Everything is just
Ordinary.

In the church, everything is white.
The poinsettias are gone,
Given to the good folk who came for Epiphany.
Nothing new has come to take its place
And it won't
Until Easter.

Ordinary time.

It was ordinary time in Jesus' day, too.
The first two years were wild,
The trek to Egypt exhausting,
But later they were allowed to come back

Back to Nazareth

And everything fell back into place--
Joseph the carpenter,
Mary his wife,
and their son
Jesus.

Just an ordinary family
In an ordinary time.

Little did they know.