Gloria in excelsis, oh I mean
Gloria dearest, you aren't even close,
Sipping your eggnog or snowbound in your suburb.
It's time for me to come clean,
Except, like Christmas Past, I'm a shackled ghost;
And the sign on your door reads: Don't Disturb.
If some people get hooked on visions,
Others simply get tied up
Like this naughty package I won't send—
Although it is the season—
And if your cheeks are flushed and you're in your cups
Laughingly spotting the Virgin, listen friend,
Pax in Terra is only one thing we lack.
This winter here, word for word out of Dickens,
Groans, and I'm turning up my collar.
Mostly I stay awake
Numbering every time I chickened-
Out. And about the world and its dollars
I'm not writing. I won't complain
When haunted by a wreath on a white door
Or tacky, spectral lights as, sweetheart, I watch
Neighborhoods turn on, homely, in thick rain,
About our children, wraiths who don't wake anywhere.
But as the church
(Donna Nobis) which I pass by,
Disquieted, as we go round, stands, and dark,
While your suburbs, under the mistletoe, kiss
(Our angels never were on high),
While downtown the stray dogs zealously bark,
I think (whisper and shake) it's you I miss.
Jack Hayes
© 2010
This poem originally appeared in Timbuktu
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