Home to a manger

Those sassy Christmas lights are waking

The vanished seventies -the three of us

Snug and warm in our little car,

Making for a stable. We’re laden

With cot and nappies and sterilised gifts,

Driving into the low sun that hours ago

Filled Newgrange with its slanty hope.

From the sweep of our new life

We loop back for the winter ritual

Doing the right thing….

You are returning and I am a stranger

Trying to take your people for my people

I stumble on the thorny threshold

Bearing my own peculiar brand of myrrh.

The manger is scrubbed, the child already born

Your hand is on my shoulder as my arms enfold her.

She is wrong for the story

But her chubby smile

Radiates down the passageway of the years,

Reaching heart crevices

That seldom see sun.