Handmade of painted paper mâché, the figures of the old nativity scene rest in the tattered box I pick up at the church bazaar for $2. Baby Jesus. A goat. Two men with lambs on their shoulders. Mary. Joseph. Five wise men bearing gifts. Two identical angels hinting this might be a combination from two original sets. A blue angel who cannot stand up. A flimsy barn and dry grass. I leave it on the doorstep where my favorite children live, hoping someone might tell the children the story of outcasts, love and humble housing. How Christmas got its name. Even if they use pagan filters. A text arrives: their house doesn’t do nativity. It’s going to Goodwill. I ask for it back. The news: ICE pulled over a seven-year-old and his mother in Illinois. Originally from Ecuador, they live in the town just upriver from me. The child’s school was the first declared sanctuary school in Vermont. The mother and child are now in detention in Texas. The superintendent of schools works to raise money for legal aid, to help the father contact them. Inside me sounds like sanctuary, mercy, peace, star of hope and love reverberate like the striking of a distant temple bell.
Tricia Knoll's hometown of Williston, Vermont is the center of ICE's national data collection and the place scouring social media to find evidence of immigrants without citizenship. She is a poet currently writing in prose. Her chapbook The Unknown Daughter was recently a finalist in the New England Poetry Club chapbook contest.
