Like Christmas

(he whispers
-like Christmas...
and opens me)

While Midnight Mass in the cathedral
calls a pale modern ghost, we sing in
an older birth, a brighter god. Here, our partheno-
genesis is no unleavened bread. This feast rises,
sun-thickened, hot as summer.

In wintry squares, starched
and woolly the flock gathers
on the steps of churches. They come
to eat the miracle, to hear
that all flesh
is grass.

Here, we howl our hymns. In the sweet
birth of breath on skin, our whispered Mass
of gasps, we pagan angels call
our own communion
drink each other down.

Christmas is
what births the god, how he becomes
flesh, how he is eaten, how we
put him inside. The lambs
bringing their sheaves, watch the magic:
the grass, all flesh, transformed
in the motion of a holy hand
to body, to blood. Take:
Eat.

As with your hand, you
make me holy, as with our mouths
we take, and drink. This Grail
is always full; this risen body of god
the staff of life. We are this Yule:
the virgin maze, the double helix of our bodies,
the miracle
which you open like a lily, like a gift
and pierce, and bless.

he whispers
- like Christmas -
and opens me