Time running in streaming ribbons behind laughing children
twisting in a holiday blur of color, movement flowing
Time swimming sinister, sleek in the silent night
hungry to devour the Child there before it quiet
and in that cattle trough.

Snuffling with snout insistent, inhaling fragrances
of common birth and bearing…and something else
coming…the smell of death overlaid in incense
but underneath…the smell of…what?
The smell of other.

And then those guileless eyes flash open,
dark and endless but not with perpetuity
no!  Endless in the Moment never ceasing!
Endless in a present never moving but never still either,
And time found itself hooked and billeted and beached.

Time is just a boat, no…a moat…a mote in eternity’s eye
Time is but a note in Wonder’s Symphony!
And with the Baby’s birth inside of Time
Eternal bells of joy ring out the chime
Olly Olly Oxen FREE!

The season of eternity is nigh,
when God gives Their response to our hurt cry
and renders youth and age trite matters moot
and blows away the ashes and the soot
revealing hearts like stars still shine beneath.

Kneel where you are, for that is where it is,
that lowly manger unseen by the great
and in that manger, there inside of you
your face upturned and wet with Heaven’s dew
the Christ Child comes to make all things brand new.