Day I: The Tree
There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
Isaiah 11:1
Jesse's roots, composted with carcasses
Of dove and lamb, parchments of ox and goat,
Centuries of dried up prayers and bloody
Sacrifice, now bear me gospel fruit.
David's branch, fed on kosher soil,
Blossoms a messianic flower, and then
Ripens into a kingdom crop, conserving
The fragrance and warmth of spring for winter use.
Holy Spirit, shake our family tree;
Release your ripened fruit to our outstretched arms.
I'd like to see my children sink their teeth
Into promised land pomegranates
And Canaan grapes, bushel gifts of God,
While I skip a grace rope to a Christ tune.
*
Day II: The Star
I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not nigh: a star shall come forth out of Jacob.
Numbers 24:17
No star is visible except at night,
Until the sun goes down, no accurate north.
Day's brightness hides what darkness shows to sight,
The hour I go to sleep the bear strides forth.
I open my eyes to the cursed but requisite dark,
The black sink that drains my cistern dry,
And see, not nigh, not now, the heavenly mark
Exploding in the quasar-messaged sky.
Out of the dark, behind my back, a sun
Launched light-years ago, completes its run;
The undeciphered skies of myth and story
Now narrate the cadenced runes of glory.
Lost pilots wait for night to plot their flight,
Just so diurnal pilgrims praise the midnight.
*
Day III: The Candle
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light:
Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.
Isaiah 9:2
Uncandled menorahs and oilless lamps abandoned
By foolish virgins too much in a hurry to wait
And tend the light are clues to the failed watch,
The missed arrival, the midnight might-have-been.
Wick and beeswax make guttering protest,
Fragile, defiant flame against demonic
Terrors that gust, invisible and nameless,
Out of galactic ungodded emptiness.
Then deep in the blackness fires nursed by wise
Believers surprise with shining all groping derelicts
Bruised and stumbling in a world benighted.
The sudden blazing backlights each head with a nimbus.
Shafts of storm-filtered sun search and destroy
The Stygian desolation: I see. I see.
*
Day IV: The Time
When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption...
Galatians 4:4-5
Half, or more than half, my life is spent
In waiting: waiting for the day to come
When dawn spills laughter's animated sun
Across the rim of God into my tent.
In my other clock sin I put off
Until I'm ready, which I never seem
To be, the seized day, the kingdom dream
Come true. My head has been too long in the trough.
Keeping a steady messianic rhythm,
Ocean tides and woman's blood fathom
The deep that calls to deep, and bring to birth
The seeded years, and grace this wintered earth
Measured by the metronomic moon.
Nothing keeps time better than a womb.
*
Day V: The Dream
...an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.
Matthew 1:20
Amiably conversant with virtue and evil,
The righteousness of Joseph and wickedness
Of Herod, I'm ever and always a stranger to grace.
I need this annual angel visitation.
—sudden dive by dream to reality—
To know the virgin conceives and God is with us.
The dream powers its way through winter weather
and gives me vision to see the Jesus gift.
Light from the dream lasts a year. Impervious
To equinox and solstice it makes twelve months
Of daylight by which I see the creche where my
Redeemer lives. Archetypes of praise take shape
Deep in my spirit. As autumn wanes I count
The days 'til I will have the dream again.
*
Day VI: The War
And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child... Now war arose in heaven.
Revelation 12:4,7
This birth's a signal for war. Lovers fight,
Friends fall out. Merry toasts from flagons
Of punch are swallowed in the maw of dragons.
Will mother and baby survive this devil night?
I've done my share of fighting in the traffic:
Kitchen quarrels, playground fisticuffs:
Every cherub choir has its share of toughs,
And then one day I learned the fight was cosmic.
Truce: I lay down arms; my arms fill up
With gifts: wild and tame, real and stuffed
Lions. Lambs play, oxen low,
The infant fathers festive force. One crow
Croaks defiance into the shalom whiteness,
Empty, satanic bluster against the brightness.
*
Day VII: The Carol
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased.
Luke 2:14
Untuned, I'm flat on my feet, sharp with my tongue,
A walking talking discord, out of sorts,
My heart murmurs are entered in lab reports.
The noise between my ears cannot be sung.
Ill-pleased, I join a line of hard-to-please people
Who want to exchange their lumpy bourgeois souls
For a keen Greek mind with a strong Roman nose,
Then find ourselves, surprised, at the edge of a stable.
Caroling angels and a well-pleased God
Join a choir of cow and sheep and dog
At this barnyard border between wish and gift.
I glimpse the just formed flesh, now mine. They lift
Praise voices and sing twelve tones
Of pleasure into my muscles, into my bones.
*
Day VIII: The Feast
He who is mighty has done great things for me...He has filled the hungry with good things.
Luke 1:49, 53
The milkful breasts brim blessings and quiet
The child into stillness, past pain: El Shaddai
Has done great things for me. Earth nurses
Heaven on the slopes of the Grand Tetons.
Grown-up, he gives breakfasts, breaks bread,
Itinerant host at a million feasts.
His milkfed bones are buried unbroken
In the Arimethean's tomb.
The world has worked up an appetite:
And comes on the run to the table he set:
Strong meat, full-bodied wine.
Wassailing with my friends in the winter
Mountains, I'm back for seconds as often
As every week: drink long! drink up!
*
Day IX: The Dance
When the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy.
Luke 1:44
Another's heart lays down the beat that puts
Me in motion, in perichoresis, steps
Learned in the womb before the world's foundation.
It never misses a beat: praise pulses.
Leaping toward the light, I'm dancing in
The dark, touching now the belly of blessing,
Now the aching side, ready for birth,
For naming and living love's mystery out in the open.
The nearly dead and the barely alive pick up
The chthonic rhythms in their unused muscles
And gaily cartwheel three hallelujahs.
But not all: "Those who are deaf always despise
Those who dance." That doesn't stop the dance:
All waiting light leap at the voice of greeting.
*
Day X: The Gift
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given... and his name will be called "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."
Isaiah 9:6
Half-sick with excitement and under garish lights
I do it again, year after year.
I can't wait to plunder the boxes, then show
And tell my friends: Look what I got!
I rip the tissues from every gift but find
That all the labels have lied. Stones.
And my heart a stone, "Dead in trespasses
And sin." The lights go out. Later my eyes,
Accustomed to the dark, see wrapped
In Christ-foil and ribboned in Spirit-colors
The multi-named messiah, love labels
On a faith shape, every name a promise
And every promise a present, made and named
All in the same breath. I accept.
*
Day XI: The Cradle
And she gave birth to her first born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger.
Luke 2:7
For us who have only known approximate fathers
And mothers manque, this child is a surprise:
A sudden coming true of all we hoped
Might happen. Hoarded hopes fed by prophecies,
Old sermons and song fragments, now cry
Coo and gurgle in the cradle, a babbling
Proto-language which as soon as it gets
A tongue (and we, of course, grow open ears)
Will say the big nouns: joy, glory, peace;
And live the best verbs: love, forgive, save.
Along with the swaddling clothes the words are washed
Of every soiling sentiment, scrubbed clean of
All failed promises, then hung in the world's
Backyard dazzling white, billowing gospel.
*
Day XII: The Offering
May the kings of Tarshish and of isles render him tribute,
may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts!
Long may he live,
may gold of Sheba be given to him!
Psalms 72:10,15
Brought up in a world where there's no free lunch
And trained to use presents for barter, I'm spending
The rest of my life receiving this gift with no
Strings attached, but not doing too well.
Three bathrobed wise men with six or seven
Inches of jeans and sneakers showing, kneel,
Offering gifts that symbolize the gifts
That none of us is ready yet to give.
A few of us stay behind, blow out the candles,
Sweep up the straw and put the creche in storage.
We open the door into the world's night
And find we've played ourselves into a better
Performance. We leave with our left-over change changed
At the offertory into kingdom gold.
Editor's note: these poems were first published in Once upon a Christmas, edited by Emilie Griffin and Barbara Wilson (C.R. Gibson Co., 1993) and shared courtesy of Leif Peterson, with our special thanks.
