by Julian O. Long
Hanging my heart’s wassail
outdoors again once more
shall I light tonight’s candle
to honor the Maccabees?
I, who am neither Jew nor Greek
nor gentile enough to call myself
Christian any longer, but not
alone. Eight days of Temple miracle
this year encompass Christmas.
A bit like recurring
planetary conjunctions billed
from time to time in the press
as the Star of Bethlehem, star
in the east that leads us towards
a dying west as Arcturus drives
his great plow in such heavenly
furrows as may from time to time
command him.
And we, needing children
we once were, await the miracle
winter solstice always seems to promise
ponder more and more the time
to time, as our recurring
celebrations grow each year
more hollow, as nations rage
and find no compass, take no
counsel or reproof.
What will the new year
bring us, no new birth
certainly. Left to comfort
ourselves, can we find solace
in faded retrograde, memory
of walks to school in childish
crowds when the air blew fresh
and scented with as yet no
fevered yearning?
It cannot be expanded
to the whole, and yet one almost
thinks it could if one knew the song—
and thus we begin to see our breath
as loops of cold air lift our singing
high and towards the sun, children
again once more in the chosen present
moment, having no memory or thought
of time before or after.
Julian O. Long is a previous contributor to The New Verse News. His poems and essays have appeared in The Sewanee Review, Pembroke Magazine, New Mexico Magazine, and Horizon among others. Recent publications have appeared or are forthcoming at The Piker Press, Better Than Starbucks, Raw Art Review, CulturMag, PineStraw, and O’Henry.