of the absurdity of anyone at any time
believing the most important birth in history
took place in the darkest backwater of empire
among dung, cold, and incurious beasts
Because of the absurdity of being expected
to believe in a Godman
who is perfectly God
and completely man
Because of the absurdity of believing
that the symbol is in fact, fact,
the reality it pretends to stand in for
in order to then stand aside
Because of the absurdity of a life proceeding
belief by belief in a world which believes
a mask is only a mask
Because of the absurdity of dead and living
billions believing life is won by loss,
love won by suffering, nothing won
at all because all is given
Because of the absurdity of coming to
believe in love as the grass believes in green,
silver slashes of light believe in the moon
and shadow, brown moods and disappearance
when the grass forgets itself in snow
Because of the absurdity of believing
believing is a grace written on a metaphoric heart
no one will ever see, reenacted
by a mind/brain as impossible
to believe in as the soul
Because absurdity is love believing
in belief itself, “evidence” of things not seen
to energize the crossed paradox
consciousness cooperates to raise
upon a hill no one can find
outside an ahistorical story
Because of the absurdity of believing
God’s mind opened like a tomb,
pried dead flesh up as with a spoon
and threaded bones together in the air
Because absurdity must sing itself to sleep
in belief, for nothing else will do,
will ever do, and nothing
will never do, so the jest
of thinking confesses yet again
“Blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord
would be fulfilled”
said the very old to the very young,
so we are told. And tell.
A PRAYER FOR FIRST LIGHT
You worked while I was sleeping,
spirit slumped against the sill,
a blank house, an old address,
stale smells and dust.
I tilted up the cellar door
for a shovel’s freight of coal
slid down the silvered chute
into the old neighborhood.
I slumbered in ash, conformed
to the ashman’s wagon
as it trailed the morning fog
past our stoop all winter.
Heard the city sparrows cry
hunger over the tarred housetops,
third-shifters fumble for their keys,
first bayings from the slaughterhouse.
You ordered the sun up at last
over the foundry’s pouring smokestack.
Window frost melted the past.
And I rose up, as you see, singing.
INVITATION
Come to the manger.
See the crossed
leg-brace rehearse.
Come to the manger
now. New breath
rises. Eyes clear.
Come to the manger
from anywhere.
Encompass one star.
Come to the manger
without distinction. Rejoin
the peaceable kingdom.
Come to the manger.
Straws of gold
nail up the light.
Come to the manger
tonight. Sheep plead
for the sleeping hills.
Come to the manger
along the old roads, singly
or together. Come as you were.
Come to the manger
over land and water. Air
will feed you. And fire.
Come to the manger
modest
