DECEMBER 7TH | LULLABY
“EVERYTHING EXPOSED BY THE LIGHT BECOMES VISIBLE, FOR EVERYTHING THAT IS ILLUMINATED BECOMES A LIGHT ITSELF. SO IT IS SAID:
WAKE UP, O SLEEPER
RISE UP FROM THE DEAD,
AND CHRIST WILL SHINE ON YOU.”
It was when my fingers froze together
around the hope I thought I owned,
when I saw the distant fires entangled
in the barren branches, when I pressed up
against the heaving side of the winter sky
and laid my cheek along the fresh-fall breast
of snow, when I let the last leaf fall from me,
vivid as a final garment sliding free, blushing
anew at winter’s kiss. Then, when I counted
the gleaming trophies on Orion’s belt. Then,
when I breathed my last breath and saw the
fading wisp of it rise, my soul, into the night.
It was then they carried the flame I could not bear,
a fragment of the coming Dawn, the herald
of a mighty Name. I let the fire of pressing forward
flicker out, and fell like a seed into the arms of the One
I wished to own, passing away. An old man dies
on the eve of winter, to awaken at the Word.