Advent: Week Four

Our legs are jelly, God of my Fathers
we need to be lifted and raised
our feet are broken, we cannot run
nor lift our voice in praise
May you show us mercy, high-handed rider
may we cease our pawing parade to pray
with the bride's veiled voice and Spirit's song
we ask you not to delay

I hastily wipe a donkey's spit
from atop a baby's face
and wonder who taught the ass his wit
and holds the worlds in place

what sits in my hands is heavier 
than I expected
harder than I can hold
its edges slowly slice 
my stiffened fingers
and splinter fractals into
my fingertip whorls
I would drop it if I could 
unclench my frozen hands
but I've forgotten how
enraptured by its freezing facets
I bend over to peer closer
my back stretching and setting 
like plaster of paris left untended
until I am turned in on it

a warmth from afar glints on my fingernails
alights on my hairs and my head
caresses my cheeks and burns the ice from my tears
I look up to the east, or at least I try to
I've forgotten how to look up
how to look up?

a gnawing squirming worry births itself
deep in my gut
and strokes its claws with loving malice down 
my spasming intestines
it laughs with my heartbeat
you can hear it if you stop
but you can't stop
or look up

until warm fingers cup my chin.

I once sat by a tree that burst with fruit
but I lost the path and am now far away
did I imagine the tree and the fruit's taste?
Perhaps. Perhaps. So now I pray
that somehow we could find a way there
a way back to the tree, to the fruit
this time I would not take but wait
I would sit and grow by the root
I wish I could return, I wish
that there was a way to change
to rewind, to do over, to give
these blood bought skins in exchange.
That foul snake I believed like a fool
if instead we received he could be felled.
One day long after a woman came to me
with a smile, because her belly swelled.