To Herod at Christmas

Fear not, despite the evening’s crippled shins
dropping to dust again from your rooftop view.
The anvil coming down upon the hammer
you witnessed in your dream will be for good.

You are warned like any other—by the stars
and distant fires, by lamp and even by
the inevitable blatant morning blue—that light
will triumph. Strange word, triumph, coming from
a hymn to an old Greek god of wine and leisure,
the certitude and peace you cannot have
because you try to stop the sun, the way
that anyone might hush a child. Hush, hush.
The hammer in your dream nails nothing down.
Sleep, wake, choose life and not the taking. I am.

Bread is not flesh and blood is not wine,
yet one becomes the other under a roof
where together people feast, far off
in a stable, their eyes upon a newborn lamb.

—John Poch