poetry: silent night
Title: Silent Night
Notes: Mary doesn't entirely know what to think of her baby. A Christmas poem--made public because it was published first in Becoming a Young Woman of God and then Understory.
Each night is the longest, this tiny miracle sleeping
Beside you and you cannot stop memorizing him
With your eyes and fingers.
Tonight you hold him and breathe
An elegy over his cap of downy hair.
(and a sword shall pierce your own heart also.)
No prophet you, but you see better
With God in your arms.
Tiny fingers curl about yours, each
A marvel; the dimpled wrist, the fine bones
Beneath flesh.
And a sword shall pierce-
You see nails not sword, hand not
Heart (but blood, oh yes), spike through the wrist
Just here, the hand older-scarred and calloused
With life beneath threads of scarlet-
And pinned to the death-tree
Trembling, you clench him closer.
The messiah sacrificed. Lamb, atonement, offering.
You cannot believe.
Your miracle dies for all the lies and hate and bloodshed
Of the world’s human burden?
(Yours too, beloved.)
His eyes blink open and you are holding
The hammer and nails and killing
Your messiah.
You are weeping.
The little fingers grip tighter
And he is too young to smile but he does,
Even when your tears drop on his cheeks,
And there is absolution in his gaze.
Notes: Mary doesn't entirely know what to think of her baby. A Christmas poem--made public because it was published first in Becoming a Young Woman of God and then Understory.
Each night is the longest, this tiny miracle sleeping
Beside you and you cannot stop memorizing him
With your eyes and fingers.
Tonight you hold him and breathe
An elegy over his cap of downy hair.
(and a sword shall pierce your own heart also.)
No prophet you, but you see better
With God in your arms.
Tiny fingers curl about yours, each
A marvel; the dimpled wrist, the fine bones
Beneath flesh.
And a sword shall pierce-
You see nails not sword, hand not
Heart (but blood, oh yes), spike through the wrist
Just here, the hand older-scarred and calloused
With life beneath threads of scarlet-
And pinned to the death-tree
Trembling, you clench him closer.
The messiah sacrificed. Lamb, atonement, offering.
You cannot believe.
Your miracle dies for all the lies and hate and bloodshed
Of the world’s human burden?
(Yours too, beloved.)
His eyes blink open and you are holding
The hammer and nails and killing
Your messiah.
You are weeping.
The little fingers grip tighter
And he is too young to smile but he does,
Even when your tears drop on his cheeks,
And there is absolution in his gaze.