I wanted to share the Christmas poem I wrote this year. As you may recall, I struggled quite a bit with my holiday poem over the last few weeks. Many false starts, wrong turns, and dead ends. However, it came together a couple days ago. I think it's pretty darn good, but you'll have to be the judge of that.
Well, Kris Kringle is going to trial in the movie, and Saint Marty has some prayers to say.
Merry Christmas.
Truce, 1914
for everyone we love, 2014
Between “Stille Nacht” and “Adeste Fideles,”
they
came together in that no man’s
place. Climbed from the trenches,
eyed
each other like distant cousins
at
a family reunion. The German boy
maybe
gave the British boy fruitcake
soaked
in whiskey because they both
missed
their mothers. Maybe
they
showed each other snapshots.
Younger
brothers. Dead grandpas. Pretty sisters.
They
pointed at them. Said names.
Benjamin. Opa Franz.
Beatrice.
Candles
stuttered in fir trees.
The
dead littered the earth,
staring
into the dark heavens,
frozen
in the violent moment
of
payment. The cost of conflict.
These
enemies, these brothers,
helped
each other bury
their
friends, prayed together.
And
peace fell on them that Christmas
Eve
like snow. It was soft.
Quiet. It felt like
a
coming home, where everybody
is
happy to see each other
after
a long season of separation.
That
is what I hold onto
one
hundred years later.
That
they looked into
each
other’s eyes, saw
something
familiar, foreign, wondrous:
hope. Newborn.
Naked. Fragile
as
a mother’s lullaby on a winter’s night.
 |
| Merry Christmas |
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