Christmas Conflict: 2001

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. . . for love is of God, and every one 
that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 
—1 John 4:7 

How were we to know 
            through the thick, smoking days, 
            the awful rubble of terror 

and the warring words? How were we 
            to remember, except through the insistence 
                        of our own hearts in the slow blue 

of morning, another day for some of us 
            to take December seriously, 
                        to practice hope like birds anticipating 

south? There are towns still wanting to believe: 
            rooms where trees stand as monuments 
                        so beautiful they might have wings. 

And Bethlehem is, after all, as near 
            as any town where gifts are not bombs, 
                        where greetings are not gunfire,

and where a shepherd could stop for directions. 
            It floats, this village, on hills in snow, 
                        under the same stars flaring over the plains 

everywhere, for anyone who survives, shivering 
            and wounded, but expecting to be allowed to love 
            on this rolling, reeling, fast darkening 

Christmas earth.