Christmas Poems to Help You Linger
It's Christmas Eve, and to be honest, I'm out of fresh reflections. We're cozy at my childhood home, and the chaos of the winter break is in full swing. I don't know about you, but I find it hard to put words together or think deeply about the reality of the incarnation when your kids are loudly singing “12 Days of Christmas” for the 144th time. So, I offer you words you may have read before or maybe not: my collection of Christmas poems. May they be a gift that you can savor in bites or in quiet moments before the rest of the house wakes. Peace and joy, Missy
They’ve cut down the oak tree
at Trinity Playground
(or a toddler teaches on Isaiah 11)
We are people who put stock
in seeds, bellies swollen with sure leaves,
expiration dates stamped
on their packets' neat seams.
You are furrowed brow,
unsteady legs on rocked playground,
bending, scattering
fistfuls of sawdust in breeze.
You sow, I swing;
you’re a pageant, a rumor:
shoots that spring up from slivers,
the ashes of trees.
Magnifica…
Genet is swaying heavy down our street,
overshadowed by the hanging pines
that line our neighborhood.
I didn’t know her expectation:
We’ve all been cocooned
three months (more) in our houses.
Baby one was born among red dust,
amid Amharic ululations, Before
flight through Egypt, bodies
tucked inside the tomb
of an oil tank for three days across desert.
Baby two was a tentative resurrection in Israel,
Pentecost tongues of hidden hotel workers
clucking delight.
And baby three will be
Here.
Will He bring down rulers from their thrones?
Will the hungry be filled with good
things?
Her belly stretches
Back Roads, Bethlehem
For Bonnie Lou, my grandmother at two
Blinking in the backseat, bracelets
of baby fat tucked into thick jacket,
she rides. Her breath makes tiny geysers
rise faithful. Black outside, the stars peer back
through roof worn thin, no place
for a little girl this early. Two
thousand years before, He chose
(no place for a little boy) to be
Emmanuel and ride with Beautiful
this, every, dark before sunrise.
Red Sea
Breath blows
Waters rush
Muddy ground
Spread wide
Staff
of shepherds
witness to
delivered
Israel's pride.
Firstborn
Oh, God,
His hands are so soft.
Film the color of
angel robes (white-hot!)
sticks to my years-rough thumb
as I stroke.
Oh, God, so soft.
He did not abhor
the Virgin's womb
but what of these callouses,
my shavings of wood?
Will Messiah eyes look down upon
the only work I've ever known?
Oh, God.
A long scar runs crimson
across my palm:
will he bleed divinity, hot,
onto boards?
His hands are so soft.
And this Ceasar, Oh, God,
he takes what I cannot replace
or pay. What when days I cannot feed
the one conceived
by the Holy Spirit?
Adonai, have mercy, please:
His hands are so soft.
O Come, O Come
I.
Cold dirt, hot blood streams.
Abdicated brother’s keeper
keeps secret deeds done in darkness.
(The bite was small, but, oh, how the venom spreads).
He wanders now, weary.
II.
Cold dirt, hot blood streams.
Worn sojourner, desert father
sees seeds sown in womb of night skies.
The cut is deep but shows now the promise stands:
Centuries. Standing.
III.
Cold dirt, hot blood streams.
Fugitive turned Pharoah’s foil
lays hands, knife on hair, flesh.
The law hot thirsts but death cleans their scarlet hands,
at least until tomorrow.
IV.
Cold dirt, hot blood streams.
Desecrated-Zion’s poet
breathes this yet: dawn in death’s land.
The Man will mourn, but somehow His wounds will heal–
Exiles cry, O come now, Servant.
V.
Cold dirt, hot blood streams.
Long-awaited Word Incarnate
writhes helpless. All our hope fleshed.
The weight will crush, but hush now, the Virgin sways,
Ransom rocked, finally,
sleeping.
flesh (n.)
Old English flæsc "flesh, meat, muscular parts of animal bodies;"
body… also "living creatures," also "near kindred"
(a sense now obsolete except in phrase flesh and blood),
Old Norse flesk "pork, bacon") - Online Etymology Dictionary
The Torah warned of karet* if you ate
the rooting, cloven.
The Talmud prescribed lashes,
39 in all.
In Eastern Europe, Jews stood
and were spit on the face
for swallowing blood.
Did you know this
when you became our kindred?
When you came near?
When you took on our animal
bruised breaking body
and wrapped Word in wriggling limbs?
You chose exile and leather straps,
saliva, slaps, severing from Shekinah
to become the living
creature we could sip (remember?)
for our sins.
*premature death,
being cast out in this world and the next
Vox Dei
“This great fire will consume us…
For what mortal has ever heard the voice
of the living God speaking out of fire,
as we have, and survived?”
-Deuteronomy 5:25-26
Did the star hang so low to see
the ludicrous:
the lips that spun atom-strands
traced by blood
of heel-grabber, harlot?
The chords that opened
ontology's opera
clamber to coordinate cries?
The timbre that terrified
morphed into mewling
that we might hear and live,
touch en-fleshed fire,
and still be.
