CHRISTMAS POEMS

A Yearly Event


Natural fibres, clothing loose, with pockets
everywhere, well traveled,
hemp, icelandic wool, natural cotton,
unadorned voices, no jewelry,
naivete’ schooled in ancient simplicities,
practiced and rehearsed
in a show of good nature.

Small gathering of friends,
shared social stratus,
appreciation of fine music
performed without pretense,
a piano, violin, two recorders,
Handel, Bach, William Byrd,
but especially Bach
colors laid on in thick
knife slabs of textured oil,
sounds only Bach of all musicians
of all human kind ever made,
whose secret rose and set
with his golden sun and silver moon.

Appreciative guests drink their wine,
chat in low voices and applaud
with friendly approval
in all the right places.

It is snowing outside,
the Christmas lights are bright
the house is warm and crowded,
no one wants to go home.


Incarnation

thought becoming music,
synapses firing symphonically,
mighty swelling winds of be,
wood, flesh and spirit
resonating,

magnetic flux gathering
all roots of desire to itself
then stepping upon any
obscure stage anywhere,
prophesied exactly there,
Bethlehem,

for a thousand years,
stepping forth at what became
the centre of history,

introduced by the Father:
“This is my beloved son,
hear ye him.”
a thing the poor and oppressed
are always glad to do.

He said “I do nothing of myself,
but what I see my Father doing,
that I do.”

We look around us two thousand
years later for signs of the Father’s hand,
opening our eyes,
plucking strings, voices singing,
flutes and violins,
watering the earth with words of redemption,
this we do.