Evidence
of paradise
Veils its
rainbowed wings,
Enters life like
one of us,
Like spirit
wrapped in
things.
Yet angels sing
in Bethlehem
No more than in
Mobile,
And kings careen
through Rocky
Mount
No less than
through Jezreel.
Dream, then, of
the bitter wind,
Nights for which
one yearns
In sorrow and
unsullied joy,
Child on whom
life turns,
Older than the
universe,
Love haunting,
hurting,
healing, worse,
An anguished joy
one can't
reverse
So long as blood
still burns.
Copyright
by
Nicholas Gordon