Christmas 2020

There is nothing sweet about this December
colorless gray. Remember the indifferent wind,
that blew without sympathy in a past
as dark as this day, on the huddled sheep,
lying in a rocky stretch between anemic plots of wild grass.
And their shepherds: remember them,
numbed on the hillsides of Bethlehem,
cursing its blow.
You could line your bird cage
with the saccharine Hallmarks
about a shiny silvered Santa ho-ho world,
as fictional as Disney’s red nose Rudolph …
Today is about Divinity being emptied out,
and taking the form of a slave.
Nothing sweet about this day.
It was what was necessary for love.
She, the little girl from Nazareth,
in way over her head, offers him her breast
her milk
her love
her fifteen-year-old life
her days ahead.
A future blind now to her.
She won’t change her mind even when she
is on the agony road with him …
And when she has to hold him dead,
as she now holds him nourished
by her fiat and her milk.
There is nothing sweet
about this gray December day.
But ah … there is glory.
In the highest, there is glory.

The Visitation

Five days from Nazareth, driven by the words of an angel,
young Miriam has trudged up miles of unforgiving incline;
tired, pregnant, hungry.
A frail young girl, she touches reverently the mezuzah
above the door of Casa Zechariah,
kisses the two fingers,
call out her “Shalom,”
and falls into the arms of her aunt;
overcome, weeping.
Elderly Elizabeth, wondrous with her blessing,
holds the girl in her arms with the reverence
of one carrying the ark, as the boy growing impossibly
within her dances in a liturgy of wonder and joy.
The not-yet prophet dances before the not-yet
fulfillment of his prophecy.

Epiphany

Night’s dark has colors too shy to be shown,
that render colorful the black of darkness,
as black covers black in the depth of sky.
If you open your eyes as wide as you can …
only a suggestion or a refraction of a pin of light
that colors dimly the stable.
But the night is glad for it,
and so are the tired travelers who have found the child;
and finding him, sense that it is they
who have been found.

Mother Mary

Sometimes, like a half-remembered fragrance,
like smiles in a half-faded photograph,
like the melody of a song hummed
all through the night,
like an unexpected gift,
like a peek through the trees at the moon’s light;
like the sun capping the earth
with the promise of morning,
like the feverish hug of forgiveness,
like the eyes of a little girl
on the knitting hands of grandmother,
like the fingertips of lovers
at the love touch aborning,
like the finches that settle
on my mother’s tombstone,
like waking hungry from a fever’s rack,
like knowing that Christ sits with me in my car,
like the embrace of cool wind on my back;
like the loving darkness that wishes me well,
like a kiss on my cheek,
like sweet tears that well into my eyes are you,
are you, O gentle, meek mother of my days.

Are you, with arms bigger than Siberia,
and voice smaller than a confessional whisper.
Are you, sweet mama for the days
when I lose my hope, with your smile
that burns away clouds and
creates a hole in the earth from Dubuque to Shanghai.
Who holds your Son in the crook of your arm
and with your free hand walks me around,
your adopted second child;
a baby boy sick already with sophistication,
and the consumption of consumption.
You gently walk with me,
a mother walk away from the dark to the light.
Mother who laughs at my pretenses,
a pierced heart mother laugh;
a sounds-like-her-son’s laugh,
laughing at all that comes with the night.

Fr. Robert Phelps’ latest book of poetry is 100 Pictures (New York: Lion Autumn Music Publishing, 2024).