I remember
last Christmas,
lingering in my mind
midst memory’s fogs
and memories
…just grey mists now,
swirling and coiling
back on themselves,
roiling forward
from the past
and boiling over
into this morning,
this day…

this time sitting
in the midst of ashes
dead and flat remaining
from that cold conflagration
of becoming thru the fires
of that season.

Friends, job,
name, family,
reputation,
all consumed
by fire,
all revealed as
morsels of the moment
(that lasted 55 years and still just a moment)…

last year,
I had it all
at least in the eyes
of those who don’t matter,
I had it all…especially
the awful yawning
void of nothing
gaping inside
me, most real
inside me,

I remember
the day after Christmas
reduced me to a place
in the hills adjacent
to the place a woman
took her own life
this year,
reduced me
to screaming incoherence
because I had run out
of words to scream and
I had just begun
to scratch the surface
of what there was
to scream about,
that awful
substantial black
nothing.

that day,
it was a close matter
a razor’s edge tumble
into red greedy flames
burning long and low
all year until
they blazed in fury fanned
when smothering shrouds
were snatched away sudden
in torn and tattered strips
to consume the bribes
and chains of nothing
clothed in costumes.

This Christmas,
nothing has been exposed,
revealed as the imposter
it still masquerades as.
I am empty of screams
but full of me and
ready to receive
the Promise of words
to give voice to
what’s unspeakable, unnameable,
to dress that wound
infected with nothing
and salve it with
the scratchy tickle of truth
and set free we
shadowbound to be
our shining selves,
casting shadows
instead of being flat
and cast by them.

It is the season of emptiness, and places
prepared by pain are hungry
for the Presence
and the Promise
that only emptiness contains.