Weekly Poems: on Christmas, Holidays, Love. Sadness, Teens, Religion, and Animals

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO MY LOVE

Merry Christmas to my love!
Enjoy the holiday!
Revel where the angels move,
Rejoice in what they say!
Years burn life down to a stub;
Christmas comes and goes.
Happiness lies at the nub,
Refuse of one’s woes.
Inside the husk there is the seed,
Shivering with glory;
The midnight cold, the dire need,
Mere setting for the story.
All the labor, loss, and pain
Sings of beauty born again.

SING OF THE HOLIDAYS THAT END THE YEAR

Sing of the holidays that end the year!
Each cause for celebration and reflection.
As darkness rules the earth, sing of good cheer,
Sustained by will and nourished by affection.
Of Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year's Eve,
Now sing that you might magnify the light!
Sing, for in your joy you will believe,
Granted grace throughout the bitter night.
Rekindle for these reckonings the fire
Each carries as a favor to the heart,
Eloquent of rapture and desire,
Twin grounds of both sincerity and art.
In quest of fellowship and common feeling,
Needing company, nor care concealing,
Giving and receiving equal measure,
Sing, then, of passion, faith, and simple pleasure!

MY LOVE IS SOMETHING SEPARATE

My love is something separate
From what we say or do.
Though we may have it out with words,
I'm still in love with you.

Just as waves ignore the rocks
On their way to shore,
And keep on coming even if
They see what lies in store,

So I will come, no matter what,
And break, and come again,
And break against your wilderness
Beyond all joy and pain.

THE PAIN WILL NEVER GO AWAY

The pain will never go away;
The wound will never heal.
The evil that was done to you
Is now your eyes, your heart.

The black will never turn to gray;
The blood will not congeal.
The violence is never through;
The past does not depart.

Time will merely make you whole,
Consuming what you are:
Part sufferer, part comforter,
Part victim, part new song;

Part mother of an angry soul,
Part child of despair,
Part witness and part conqueror
Of all that did you wrong.

YOUR SAY DOES NOT DERIVE FROM WHAT YOU SAY

Your say does not derive from what you say.
A child hears the one most often here,
And loves the one whose love's most often near.
You must have known that when you went away.
The power lies with those who choose to stay,
For parents rule by love far more than fear,
And children follow those they hold most dear.
It takes far more than will to have your way.
And now you want to tell me what to do,
Not having earned the right through years of love
But claiming the authority of seed;
While I will give precisely what is due,
Returning love to those who loving prove;
Serving those who long have served my need.

SECULAR CELEBRATIONS SEEM SO SPARE

Secular celebrations seem so spare,
Even with religious ancestry,
As though the brick beneath what had been there
Stood unadorned where stuccoed grace should be.
Old prayers and praises now sound insincere,
No longer fitting where but reason reigns.
'Tis the season, nonetheless, for cheer;
Scoured of mystery, mystique remains.
God aside, the dark still turns towards light;
Revolving Earth still tilts into the sun;
Each gift of breath still fills one with delight;
Each child is still all being new begun.
The miracles one celebrates are questions
Implying answers too remote to know.
Nor need one not have faith in the directions
Given those whose fate it is to go
Step by careful step towards what is so.

CHARLIE

Charlie is my golden, longhaired sin.
His eyes tell all his dark brown chocolate thoughts.
All he wants is loving without end,
Ravenous for touching of all sorts.
Left on his own, he cannot comprehend
In lonely misery how I defend
Even just one breath away from him.