I’ve only desired to light old lamps with young wicks
(the tongues of flame must be blinking hard with vigilance)
Across dark, mildewed alcoves that smell of ink —her writing ink —
But one thing led to the other, and the ink I
Found froze in my eyes, the bottle instantly petrified among desert ruins.
I searched, from my village to Nantucket, borrowing
The courage of voyaging storms, seeking earnestly her quill feather,
Just to caress her pretty face with it.
But the power of distance arrested me midway and warned me
Of the dangers of costly adventures.
I hankered after a trained parrot —an amanuenses of note—
With less brilliant plumage,
Electrifying elocution,
To detect to me the protocols of her language.
But that, too, failed.
The parrot was either born mute or chose to be.
I did all I could? to seek, to find, to locate, to identify items
Belonging to her —bric-a-brac of a telling age.
And then there were none.
Christmas is a long song sung in winter,
An epic poem written with white quill feather pen and
Gold ink, and on clouds of paper,
Beginning from a sneezing December to a
Dizzying twelfth-calendar month,
When snow drizzles gently into the souls of
Those who hearken to the tinkling sound of
The church bell which rings gently with the weight of
The slow-passing season.
I see whiteness in every song, with so much redness;
Regal and romantic; flagrantly friendly.
Oh, how pure!
Oh, how sweet!
Well, that’s Christmas.
It lights up the courage in us to think right and assume
Merriment in the warmness of some frozen hearts.
It’s the best time of the year.
I swear to this because I am a child of Christmas.
It’s a time of fog and dew and sleet that rebaptise us.
Let’s not forget the slanting rain whose liquid kisses us.
And white Christmas of snow-carpeted lands and seas.
There’s no other time or season like it.
So full of gentleness and love,
Christmas causes hearts to race s-l-o-w-l-y,
As the year races on to breast the tape of seasons.
What I would not write is much
On the sullied cloak of the clergies.
My inkwell keeps running dry
Each time my quill feather
Is dangled in their direction.
A warning not to belittle
Or mock the modern day Pharisees
Because surely there are
A few good men in their lot.
Yet you should feel this in the heart.
Because therein lies your eternity
I care less of the
Of the fierce looking bobbies
And dogs guarding their calvacades
And mansions here on earth.
I care less of the fetish manipulation
They have over the hungry pew.
And the load of labels
They hang on their necks
To deceive the credulous flock.
Yet it hurts me deeply
To see the false dogmas
Pouring down from the pulpit these days.
Stranger and farther from the truth
They keep getting nowadays.
And by their fruits ye shall know them.