Strange it was that night
When the Yuletide airs of birth
Were companioned to the earth
With a father’s toiled passing.
The infant Jesus
Is often pictured
With a tiny cross
Held sweetly in that hand
That will one day know a knife,
And the Magi surely knew
That their journey to that cave
Was also to the grave
Of their loved and splendid Gods.
And the turning of the world
Was the winding of a shroud
That Christmas throe of birth
In a dying dispensation.
On a field outside of Midland
The snow glistened and was gone
Dew scenting sweet the hour’s
Anticipation of the dawn.
Death came like a soothing Magdalene
Releasing in a whispered
Anointing touch of flame
The burden of the fever
From its charge to there remain.
And a wind stirred softly on those waters
Darker than a depth
Than those known by any sea.
Each night faith wings in caverns
A captive chrysalis of dreams
And what is often reenacted
We’ve rarely since believed.
Three timbers wine-stained wood grain
And a boulder barring entrance to a grave
Are among remembered fragments
When flesh returns to clay.
For in the end
The man some call the Christ
Was laid again to stone
As if returning home
Where as an infant he had lain.
Only the dead
Can speak knowingly of death
And perhaps
Lovingly, as well.
Of this family’s father
I knew little more than name
But I’ve come to love his daughter
And believe that love sustains.
For the windows of her eyes
Now seem the portals of his feeling
And what in the end was ash
Was mingled to the clasp
Of an infant evergreen
Growing deathless in a field
Which once knew only stones
But now it seems a home
As if a cradle in a cave
Where a stone was rolled away
In the quiet lilt of morning.