Onward, Christmas Soldier

To lure the sun back on the longest night of the year,
ancient people kept bonfires going.
I meet my neighbors in the street to place white bags filled
with a scoop of sand and a tea candle for the annual lumieres.
Before the night has ended, the battery-powered light
of three less-than-wise men will give out
in their snow cave near the summit of Mt. Hood.

I can’t tell you why the early Christians chose December 25th
to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but I can guess
it had something to do with the power of the flame,
a kindling of faith that a new day will come,
an angel’s sword flashing this way to heaven.
And I remember thirty years ago keeping a log on the fire
throughout those December nights in an old farmhouse we rented,
the covenant the body makes with the soul to carry the light,
the soul’s gift of the body’s brilliant nakedness.

Had you looked in a window one of those long, cold nights,
you would have thought you saw a young woman ironing
a coat of many-colors, a hooded robe of a monk,
a soldier’s camouflaged battle fatigues.
Had you followed her toy soldier as he joined the moon’s mad march
across the night sky, you would have felt their trackless arc,
the spear of their white light.

Look how the light in his eyes mirrors
the exploding roadside bomb of the sun at daybreak.
Watch as she vacantly sorts through the tangle of coat hangers
on the floor of an empty closet, drops the mouse king’s corpse
on the porch for the cats.
That sad season I was under house arrest for speeding
down Main Street, DUI at the wheel of the Steppin’ Out
Dance Studio Christmas float with nineteen people holding on
for dear life, and I did not care about the fly named Rudolph
buzzing against the parlor ceiling,
open a window to let it meet its frosty morning death.
And I did not smile when it dove into the fire and burned
to a crisp black star.
I did what a man does when he’s born several thousand years
too late for the Roman festival of Saturnalia.
I lit up like an altar boy and quietly got stoned.

Viewing Edward Hopper's "Gas, 1940"

We see a country road cooling down, the joe-pye weeds
in the ditch and the sultry white pines.
It’s a little after sunset—deceptively beautiful—
a streak of pink hanging above the earth,
and the station attendant is a man doing the routine jobs
of locking the gas pumps for the night, dragging in the rack
of oil and wiperblades , a scene we knew well.
We can feel the loneliness of the station
in the way the road is empty of automobiles,
the way the light escapes the station’s open door,
inviting the man back inside.
Overhead, in the white sign’s spotlight,
a winged horse still soars, as though keeping watch
for motorists invoking the power of the gods.

All day something has kept the dials spinning
on the pump, dinging the owner’s tiny money bell.
All day something has pulsed through the black rubber
hose, making splashing sounds in the cars’ metal tanks.
All day some voice in the attendant’s head has stuttered,
Filler up? Check under that hood? That’ll be $1.80
for ten gallons of ethyl, sir. Come again.
And finally, some familiar euphoria has lifted off the man
at the end of the day, leaving his head achy, body sluggish.

Should he not think of the world as a vast engine,
purring along under his care?
Should he not want to climb behind the wheel
and joyride until the wheels fall off?
Or should we, the witnesses, point out how the artist
chose not to paint any oil rainbows or gas stains
in the white sand of the driveway, chose not to let us see
the attendant’s ash-gray face, his eyes dull as lead?
If we didn’t know who we’d become, we’d almost believe it.