Should I in
2012?
Write the usual Christmas poem?
All within me doesn’t want to express
The fragments and make them a whole
Infant which carries the world’s weight.
Much has raveled out: the church,
The massacres, the cousin who is
Suffering in another county.
I can stay upstairs and read my book
Of essays; I can fix my Christmas eve
Chicken; I can look forward to travel.
But still the hush creeps into me, and
I think of the baby who changed
Everything and who introduced a
Tear into this universal shroud which
Speaks death all day long and maybe
Tomorrow. The baby slit a hole
For us to escape and for us to consider
A Love that we’ve never known. A
Purported Love for even me.
While others are enraptured over
The true belief in this, I must still
Be quiet. I must still go to the “stable”
And look and stare. I must put all
Peripherals in a drawer, and I must
Bow and see in order to worship and believe.
And so I sit, typing out a nativity re-enactment
But one in which the baby reaches out,
Through time-encasement, through
historical
Decay, through modern disillusionment, His
Little human finger, sparked with love, to me.
In 2012, despite all, I know the touch and choose belief.
TWW
