For Those Finding Christmas Hard

 

The light shines in darkness, and the darkness comprehends it not.  – Gospel of John 

Something human,
something we all comprehend,
namely, the dark incomprehension of sorrow.

Which comes thicker, darker, under the coloured lights,
and the seasonal sounds of Mariah Carey.

There’s enough grief in any one life,
to ice over an average ocean.

We see it in relief, on these,
our extraordinary faces.

Pain,
scrolled on brows,
pain,
chiseled on cheeks,
heartache,
inexhaustible,
etched over entire bodies.

And absence,
the last casual wave of a son,
a daughter abused by a man.

And loneliness,
an airport, a partner, a parting,
a friendship worn thin by distance.

And death,
the death of a life mate,
soul mate, who made life worth it
(and now what).

And faith, like plastic ferns in funeral homes.
And hope, overplaying its hand, often bluffing.
And God, just us pleading with the sky.

And all this restless atrophy,
underneath our oh-so-human plaster casts of happiness,
sponsored by a myriad of indispensable addictions.

And still we cling, in this dark,
to any whisper of light,
make it dark,

dark enough that a wavering star,
a burned-out bedside lamp,
a cauterized memory,
can bring us this

big story of a Saviour’s birth,
so ancient, so miraculous,
it has to be true,
even if it’s not.