Christmas

getting closer to Christmas now.

Thanksgiving here and gone

and I am getting older.

my glass eyes are smudged

with fingerprints and charcoal,

the season approaches anyway.

Christmas is coming in candles

windows

first snows

children.

It is a dirty ordeal for me

blood and after birth

on hay and manure

sweat and breathing

and him wondering

if she has really never lied with another.

he is the first to hold him anyway,

he will raise the child as his own.

the ground is cold and hard

here in New York

the occasional manger scene

and snot dripping noses

tell me Christmas is coming.

spiced rum eggnog, cheap tinsel

and memories of grunting

and afterbirths,

waiting for the first wet cry.

hope still sits candidly on the

glass eyes of children this time of year.

they turn rosy at a spirit

that they don't quite understand.

others slaughtered hope and lambs

with their fears long ago.

the cynical ones fill up motels and inns

fulfilling prophecies in their filling of

drink. No room for you here.

it comes without pretty trimmings

or l.l. bean sweaters

for me. Christmas is the painful

bloody birth

of salvation.

It is messy and it is mine.