At this turning of the year

We confront an unholy nexus of fear,

Solstice: the apex of the year,

ride the crest of a wave of darkness

The drunkard's Christmas kiss

As the sun squats on the horizon

Of his squandered life

Fear you can cut it with a knife

transforms the frosty night owls of winter

Into a travesty of this lack of light.

Beneath this peak of dark

lies the slough of depair

the trough of light

and beneath the pinnacle of death

we forget our restless ordinary lives.

The acme of our dreams

is dead

or so it seems.

I want to create the stature of a winter-stripped of all pretence

A winter without end

an apex of divorce, alcoholism, violence, strife,

Children left alone, bereft of hope,

an overwhelming apogee of regret,

and the sudden flowering of forgiveness.

The brow of this hill of Calvary.

Is the very cusp of our salvation

where we see the skull beneath the skin

built upon a crown of thorns: composed of his blood, his agony.

At the vertex and summit and pitch of sacrifice

We fall again beneath the spell of this turning of the year

A baby born in occupied Palestine,

A place of terror and fear,

sleeps peacefully, in a stable.

So close, so far, so near.