Monday, December 25, 2017

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.
 


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