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