Poetry

Christmas Eve

Luke 2:35

Dec 07, 2012 by Jerry Walls

Adam’s rib was Christmas Eve
Foreshadow of a pierced side
Who pulling down forbidden fruit
Set fast in motion Yuletide.

Joseph’s bride was Second Eve
Endowed with gift of pierced soul
Who bowing down to own his will
Joined God in making wounded whole.

For shadowment: Villanelle for the solstice

Dec 06, 2012 by Angela Alaimo O'Donnell

Here, here in the crook of the year,
the crux and fix and flux of the year
light falls long across and dear.

Here in the ruck and dreck of the year
We glean and gather grace and gear,
here, here in the crook of the year.

Here is the neckbone of the year,
its knuckle sharp, its blade sheer,
where light falls long across and dear.

Hear the matins of the year,
the chant of praise and marrow fear,
here, here in the crook of the year.

Cheer the vespers of the year,
the prayers that rise from tongue to ear
as light falls long across and dear.

Clear your mind as night draws near.
Stead your heart and shed no tear.
Here, here in the crook of the year
where light falls long across and dear.

Kant at the laundromat

Dec 05, 2012 by Jerry Walls

Between the plate glass
And the security bars
Hung a red and gold sign:
“Felíz Navidad.”

As my socks and dirty underwear
Churned with my jeans
I browsed a book
On that “most famous” passage in Kant
That lays open
The deep gash between
The world that is
And
The world that ought to be.

Above the rusty dryers
Another sign:
“Do not put babies in carts.”

Easy to imagine
The ugly gash
If one tumbled head first
To the unforgiving floor below.

No more I suppose
Ought a responsible mother
Put a newborn in a manger.

Ironic then
That we who say
“Felíz Navidad”
See beginning there
The convergence of
The world that is
With the world
That ought to be

When the rain clears

Dec 04, 2012 by Julie L. Moore

Standing on the street
in the early morning of late autumn,

I marvel to see, to my left,
over my own backyard, rain

and to my right, over my neighbor’s barn,
only clear, dry air.

As I walk this line
drawn by the ordinary length of asphalt,

I think of the theologian who said,
God is on the loose now,

no longer hidden behind
the parochet, waiting for the high priest

to ask for the atonement
of his people’s sins.

The rain has to clear somewhere.
Why not here? Like the road has rent

a veil that cloaks the fullness
of sight, separates shade from light.

“Tired of the stench, Haitians burn bodies in plaza”

Nov 29, 2012 by Diane G. Scholl

And the flames leap higher in the darkening sky;
a vivid wall of fire sheds its light on faces
hushed as if a child were being born, a manger
ready in the rudest inn. Everywhere straw
and the droppings of chickens, broken plaster,
dust of collapse. In the camps, children die
of cholera, hungry dogs drag garbage
through back alleys running like a sore.

Here, the stench of bodies trapped in bricks
and mortar will remain a little while. In the plaza
they wrap their noses, silent as the captives
find a quick release—a sudden rush of wind,
a rain of embers when each soul flies up.

A mantra stills their scoured tongues.
Expectant, calm, and speechless underneath
white winter stars, they eye the pyre simple
as a crèche, this crowning what a birth might be,
no midwife but their prayers that mount,
gray gulls above the stretching limbs of trees.