Flame Into Embers

Is this a season of waking or sleeping, of life or death? The sky glows radiant royal blue, health and energy, before it falls asleep in stillness, demure grey. The leaves flame in red and gold, crackling their song of a changed life. Later they will whisper of death, fall to the ground and lie in obscure brown on brown. The season flaunts itself in a last attempt to hold onto life and beauty, like the man with the fancy toupee and the dying woman who spends her lonely pension on beautifying creams and colored paints that stand out against the ghostly pallor of her face. Autumn, you are dying. Man, you are dying. Woman, you are dying.

And yet, the beauty in Fall is not unnatural, like the stiff, embalmed smile or the newly-painted nails on the well-dressed body in the velvet-cushioned coffin (the soft bed for rattling bones). Perhaps the last show of color is not a beautifying cream, but a final dance on rheumatic limbs that remember their youthful suppleness until their last energy is spent, and they lie down when no life is left, their last dance done. Perhaps Autumn is an old woman who throws away her carefully prescribed bottles, her monthly treatments, her stifling orders, and chases her grandchildren in circles, laughing, until her heart and breath give out and she falls at their feet, her joy spent in one last loving dance.

A season that lives until its death. May I live through my dying until at least I lie down quietly, clasp my hands, and say, with one last spark in my eye, “Now… that is done. The flame is past, into Thy hands I commend these dying embers.”

The gardener rakes the dead leaves into a pile and sets them aflame one last time. The smoke, smelling of color, rises toward heaven, lending all who pass by a strange vibrant tingle of their past life.

Even embers warm cold hands.

The True Event of Christmas Eve, Anno Domini 2010

In reverential steps,
the peace of the Christmas liturgy
spreads to all.
Heart full of adoration,
I chant the offertory.
As the warden collects the generous gifts,
the choir clears throats, turns pages.

BANG!
Someone screams, many duck.
Hearts race, the world seems to stop.
Silence.
It came from his pocket! a man shouts.
Was it a cell phone?
No, no! a woman cries.
It was a gun!

The warden limps to the back.
There in his knee, two bleeding holes.
The choir clears their throats of panic.
Rejoice and be merry, we sing,
as children cry and red and blue lights flash.

Gradually all is made clear.
A man with fear for his life
reached in his pocket to give the warden a check
and gave him a bullet instead.
A tragic accident, but only a small wound.
Yet the church remains paralyzed in shock
through the motions of worship.

As respectful cops silently investigate
the splintered wood, our shattered peace,
I wonder. Has it come to this?
Has our fear
come to this?
That a man would carry death in his pocket
to a place of prayer
on the eve of peace?

Only one figure in the church
did not start at the deafening crack.
Only one remained still
at the frightful disruption.
Still in the knowledge that He is God.
From the crèche, his small voice speaks to me,
the one we’ve come to adore speaks:

I am of greatest import, I am of highest transcendence.
I am the One who is relevant.
Lying here most vulnerable, I have overcome all.
Do not fear this world
I am come to redeem.

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