i am trying to write this poem for You
as once more we prepare to mark Your birth
but this year the words are slow to come
so often on this trip around the sun
my pendulum has swung from rage to ecstasy
and back again — i forget how i feel in between
until something boils over and i watch helpless
as the world writhes beneath its gaping wounds.
i long for someone to hold on to — someone
to hold onto me — with a grip that won’t let go.
and yet, here You are, the great unsafe-but-good
guiding my feet over rain-wet paths and through
the rivers rushing down the gutter as i try to
picture You, the unseen made obvious to eyes
the intangible transmuted into the touchable,
ageless wisdom beyond time bound up in the body
of a baby. what a holy joke, someone must have said
the word through which all things were made now
made into a finite frame with feet and fingerprints.
what is gained through grounding glory in grime?
but divine plot twists are above what we mortals
could conceive, thank God. so here You came,
a little bundle of dust and bone and starlight song
born to be with us as one of us — born to die
because of us, yet for us. only You can heal the wounds
of the world … and only You, here beyond my ability
to comprehend or imagine, will never let me go.
