Midwinter's Reminder
“Geez, Mary, can’t you tell a good idol from a poor idol?
There’s plenty of fine wood and stone available;
Those materials have much more grounded aesthetic precedent anyway!
I’m so confused… do they even make graven images out of flesh and blood?”
Inscribed in body of the blest North Star:
The promissory note, which still doth read
In future that all debt be burned by fire
And smashed to sand by force majeure of sea––
It, scattered all about our hopeful world,
Becomes the very thing which makes it up.
Star shineth still on all: those rich and churled.
May ‘member we to look down on our luck
Just once a year. The other days, then, doubt
The guarantor who chose to come and say,
At risk of death and pain and tiring out:
“Your hope should fly to me on Christmas Day;
Aghast to coin and dirt, today enlivened you can be.
This once-a-year, go throw it all away to rest in me.”
I’ll never know what Will depraved
Would choose to come be birthed in cave
And leave His throne in heaven bright
To chill and tremble in the night.
He loved you more than e’er He should
(‘Tis I, not Him, who lost you in the wood
So bleak). Just keep of this ere all:
‘Twas only one could hope to break the Law.