December 24: Christmas Eve Blessings, Near Exhastion, "Greccio Nativity, 1223"

Apologies for my extended absence.  The trip to Calumet and Christmas preparations have kept me more than a little busy these last few days.  I am near exhaustion, and I still have a pile of presents to wrap. 

I just got back from the Christmas Eve service at my wife's church a little while ago.  It was all candlelit, with joyous music and honest goodwill.  The choir director is one of my dearest friends, and she recently lost her daughter.  She was really struggling tonight.

Remember to hold your loved ones close tomorrow, amid all the insanity.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for beautiful wife and kids.  True Christmas blessings.

Greccio Nativity, 1223

by:  Martin Achatz

Cow perfumed

the night, along

with good, clean donkey,

the stiff incense

of sow and sheep.

Maybe the cow’s udder

swung heavy with milky

fingers, the donkey’s pellucid

gaze on the steaming manure

where worm and beetle communioned.

And Saint Francis spoke

to these with his hands,

dug his nails up and down

their backs, muzzles, snouts,

let their tongues suck

salt from his skin,

affirmed that he was

brother ass, brother fly,

part of this old and new

tale told in a language

of sweat and groan, one with them

at the holy trough, starved,

starving for a pitch of winter hay.

Listen to them—

their moans and sobs

fill the dark like my teenage

daughter, hungry for the body

of the boy she loves.