All ThingsYou May Expect To Shine

[at Christmastime]

[“Greater love than this, has no man, that he lay down His life for a friend.”

-Jesus]

all the things you may expect to shine

can fall between the cracks of vagrant stars or sidewalks

never glistening at all beside the lost marbles, jacks, and

mercury dimes you know are all still in there.

and you are unornamented

and your branches cannot hold

all this through long ages

for even an instant longer

while they measure you

for a costume in

the Pageant of Nothing,

holding you hostage

to the solstice snowmen on an

elementary stage.

O beknighted Child.

Sing, Noel, though you are banished for it

by the fathers of the long frost, everywhere.

somewhere, something waits and bides all Time, again;

and unexpectedly, the gales begin to turn

on a fragrance from a winter garden

you once thought you learned the music to;

so fugitive, you thought you may have dreamed it all

when you were home sick from school and

stuffed with fairytales and mentholatum in

the drifting counterpanes,

back to life and missed homework

redolent with the outside air 

brought in a little judgmentally

by cheerful, car-coated classmates you barely knew…

and unnamed dread.

but lowly beyond belief, He is:

accrued like a pearl in a sea of darkness

and silent, tear on tear

while small horrors thundered
and their retinues.
and their retinues.

and everything you fought

you have forgotten;  the stick-like words they said

the silly, sicled sighs, the paper wadded landings.

kick through the pebbles they pebbled you with,

debris they wrapped in fancy paper

(before they threw) smiling before the Teacher's face.

it’s only rubble now though yesterday their towers grew

though not by grace.

now that the Light of all lights appears

in your own skies now in God’s own time each tinted year

and pastel bulbed and bright through mist fraught windowpanes

canceling the shadows Forever as many times as you cry out for it

of the puppeteers with their vast holdings

and talent for mimicry that know how to

dig in for the long haul

fox-holed in your gleaming mind or

rabitting at the children’s parties to much applause

to pointless punch and cookies, and cake that crumbles
and breaks off at the end

of the dime store holly rimmed paper plates too paper thin.

while your embarrassment shines through the room
 as though it were candlelabra.

you just want to go home where the real Christmas is.

never mind that in these latter days

the thwarted herods of the work-a-day
 having been brought word of your soul

are trumpeting it all over town  that it’s all over for you, now-

and calling the caterers a little prematurely,b.c.e…

while mysteriously the Sundial gathers force
in a forgotten rose garden in the snow
indicating what can't be predicted
it’s not the end of the world, now, is it?
Grandmother whispered softly

Light, pure light.

Be not dismayed.

mary angela douglas 20 december 2012