‘Someone’s got to stay with the sheep,’ they said.
‘You know you’re too slow anyway, old Ebenezer,
If we’re to be back before light,’ they said.
The night is old now too
The sharp winter stars moving smoothly but fast
My bones creak in the cold.
In the fire’s heart the lumps of wood
Are wood no longer but blocks of pulsing red
Fire barely contained in a stick’s skin
Like the strange Spirit of God that leaps sometimes
Inside me on wakeful nights
Till the old man is hardly there at all
But is all consumed by God, so close
As close as the yellow planets hanging in hand’s reach
When the dew glitters on huddled sheep’s backs
In the unearthly starlight.
This child, now, will he be like that?
This promised one, will he burn full of God
Till the brat is consumed in the Spirit
Till one thing, neither fire nor wood but both
Is left? I wish him childhood first
This boy whose manhood I’ll not live to see
Time to doze with the sheep on hot afternoons
To see the sea and crunch the snows of Hermon.
Ah well. Another stick to the fire
And a walk round the breathing, stirring flock.
The new star over Bethlehem is paling now.
Sunrise is near.
tRuth 2005
image Wikimedia Commons, no copyright
poem prayer silence 