In creeping fog
of wintry night:
My eyes are clogged.
Billows of blight.

Dull cataracts
veil antique lamps,
gun cotton tracks,
pale wreaths of damp.

Yet though here loom
dun brooding hulks
of cold stone gloom
in misty sulk

the lamps shine forth
and shall not fail
’til dark fades north
and pulls the veil.

In the sallow sea of sable ink
that breaks upon my splintered prow,
fire beacon’s beam a-lightly winks
and casts gold light upon my brow.

I see a man walk on the swells
and wave to me through sheets of sleet,
his silver voice a tolling bell
that beckons me to take the leap.

His shining rope crests upon the waves
that rend my vessel in tempest flares:
Across black brine the lifeline sways —
My callused hand will take its dare

to grasp the line that more life gives
and feel its pull to once more live.

I am the night
that never ends.
I weight your world
until it bends.

My cloak of fog
devours your light
and deprives the soul
of inner sight.

Once Dante stood
before my gate:
Abandon hope
and seal your fate.

Selah.

A distant presence
now calls me out
to challenge my
dark seeds of doubt.

My choking mist
and gripping vines
are loosened by
an else divine.

My nine circles
now fall to one.
A white-gold flame:
My time is done.

Two thousand years and miles away
a foretold child was to poverty born.
A tyrant willed to keep his sway
and murdered children in his scorn.

The child would live to preach a love
that surpasses the smallness of our minds;
The despot now dwells in a dim-lit grove
of shattered urns and skeletal time.

That child became a man of words
which fell upon unhearing ears —
They twist his love to sharpened swords.
To a tree he’d be nailed: hyssop tears.

Yet though he too had died alone
like the despot who’d hunted him,
his message of love has only grown
in spite of new despots grim.

A tale of two kings in memory:
One turned to dust, one love’s victory.

My heart’s ventricles
form a vast vaulted ceiling —
Crumbling cathedral

A marble altar
in a gilded Baroque church —
Poor babe in manger

A blanket black across the sky:
The ice-ringed moon lights backs of sheep.
We see our breath and hear the sighs
of gathered cattle that we here keep.

There in the dark on pasture fields
while we watch over our huddling sheep,
a silver seraph, her wings revealed,
now rouses us from the darkness’ deeps.

She opens up her thousand wings,
reveals a blaze of gilded flame,
cold air around us begins to sing
in tempest that her fire proclaims.

Our hearts now race, our eyes are blind
from searing light and disbelief:
in cowering terror we take our flight
and quiver as a quaking leaf.

Out of the cauldron of light she made
comes forth a voice of gold lyre strings:
Dear shepherds, my friends, don’t be afraid
for I am herald of glad tidings.

And all around, piercing the dark,
come further blazes of wings and song,
each calling to us to rest and hark
to this gathering radiant throng.

Their whirlwind song swells to a peak,
of peace and glory in highest heights.
We long to see of which they speak:
the wonder of this night of nights.

Their chorus gleams and softly fades;
the embers of our hearts now glow.
We stand in awe of what they said
and feel our veins with warm hope flow.

We see a star rise in the west:
To the birthplace of a shepherd king
we walked in peaceful silence past
the watchful stars a-twinkling.

Along the path to newborn babe
are brambles, barren bushes’ thorns
that by the light the angels made
bring forth red roses with gold adorned.

Thus from the shards of broken worlds
comes sudden hope in wings unfurled.