Christmas Woman

Christmas is the time of year

When the patrons and the panthers

Come and commandeer

Christian, put away your fuss

With the tipping of the handlers

As the pagans must

I know for a century

We were scrambling to assemble

What a man believes

I know for a time I let

To believe that human kindness

Would prevail instead

Woman, have you lost your kind?

There are snakeskin stealers

Seething in the afterlife

Christian in the advent house

You confess the incarnation

With the breast turned out

Have you seen the Christ the king

Suckling nurseries in snakeskin

In the armored seat?

Christian, put away your woes

Welcome grief and crime and anguish

With the happiest host

Oh, I was thinking by myself

I was remembering

Every moment by the river

When it froze last night

And in the fullness of the moon

I felt the baby kick beside me

She was grabbing happy, healthy life

I lived it out to be a soldier

I was channeling Middle Ages

I was captured by the Norsemen rite

The sign that passeth comprehending

She was tending right beside me

She was captured in the midst of men

And then it kissed me on my shoulder

All the possibilities of motion

Resting rightly, right inside of me