Light Bent Low

There was a time before the child.

In that time, the first

fathers and mothers

knew the light and

danced its return each year,

joy in the world when

descending darkness was

caught in the sun’s rising hands

once more. And it was good.

But on the night of the child

light bent low—

entered through the lowest—

to say that hope is not

a sky creature after all,

but clay-made, like us

with hands and breath and bones

perfectly suited for the

precision of love.

Follow the star,

but look to the earth to find the child—

not a harbinger of something new at all,

but a reminder of truth beyond time:

Who. You. Are.