Should I in 2012

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