Poetry, please

A colleague - L. Patrick Carroll - is home recovering from a hip replacement; he is a wonderful writer and shares the following poem. Enjoy his lovely words.

The Christmas Feast

I keep getting “fixed”;

Stuff wears out or breaks.

Hopes, dreams, ideals…

Recently a second hip replaced,

Earlier in life a nose, a jaw,

My whole left side paralyzed.

Heart broken,

Figuratively and literally,

Lives and loves too often lost;

And not just me:

Yeats insisted:

“Things fall apart…”

Bernstein’s Mass memorialized:
“How easily things get broken.”

Our world, nation, selves,

(Like mine)

Need mending,

Need Christmas.

Valleys must be smoothed,

Mountains lowered,

Swords to plowshares molded,

Darkness turned to light.

The Word becoming flesh

Translates as

Companion God, by choice,

Sharing our tears, our tent,

Our brokenness,

To fix it, mold it,

Mend it, make it whole,

Not magically “in one fell swoop,”

But offering a healing,

All-repairing path —

Unselfish love —

That we can trod, however haltingly,

As Jesus did,

Arriving at our feast

With all its “fixings.”

(S-R archive photo courtesy of NASA)