THE MANGER
No light shines that is not itself a road/ No other door opens except in dreams.---From “In Dreams” by Simeon Dumdum, Jr.
This fire must burn fiercely to build the road
that ends at the foundling’s darkened cavern.
Blind eyes will discover how only hearts can
find where the flame has been lit to crackle
through endless nights of endless dreaming
for an advent that is also the final leaving:
How long will this journey take to open doors
that will take him in? Why are they all closed?
A peasant woman and her bewildered lover,
huddle around a trough of dampened feed,
and cannot hear their fears drowned by hope
that their wildest nightmare of an unborn
child would be a prince of peace whose light
is all he could offer the wounded and the poor.
For these afflicted, the light will all be roads,
to his kingdom where dreams are also doors
to a bountiful garden carved from twin hills
of birth and crucifixion. Bethlehem is Calvary.
---Albert B. Casuga
12-19-11
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