One Christmas Eve

                                       One Christmas Eve

Clouds in smouldering foment , enraging the dark boiling skies,

Foretold in any moment , all Hell would break loose in our eyes.

 An old farmer hurried the last herds in, to their mangers with all of the rest,

His daughter soothing the noisy din, her small brother clutching her dress.

    

 It was Christmas Eve, but like no other, the brewing weather forecast,

In dense and heavy smother, we hoped the barn door would last.

From the barn, passed the pen, through the gate, to the house,

We leaned straight into the wind,

Dodging tumbleweeds, in britches, bonnet and blouse, we prayed we’d make it back in.

      Cracking open the front door, a dust devil tore by,

In his whistling dervish dance,

Ma reached for the Bible, on the mantle hard by,

Before we fell for his demonic trance.

He spun backwards, as Ma read the story,  a stunned, reeling, servant of sin.

Fearing the fire and rainbow glory of the one spurned at Bethlehem’s Inn.

Then out and away he wildly flew, through the window’s billowing curtain,

Back to his dammed ,tormented, tortured crew, this we knew for certain.

The winds grew still, the drapes fell back,

into silence deep and low,

Quietly, gently, creeping over the night,

came downy feathers of snow.

In shear weariness of heart and soul, we collapsed in a cold tired sweat,

Our spirits were sinking into hellish holes, and we had not seen the end of it yet.

A wretched slumber overwhelmed us all ,as we shriveled into deepest dark sleeps,

We all slipped down into Satan’s ball, where the ten horned dragon creeps.

There his seven heads vomit out fire, at the woman clothed in stars, sun and moon,

This was no slumberland, no dream of desire, no dance with the silvery spoon.

Yet, even as the nightmare began, like the parting of a black sea,

Struck the trident of Michael,

with his angels in hand, unmasking the ageless tree.

Now drooping with glorious fruit, 

A horror turned into wonder,

To the music of the silver flute,

and a majestic distant thunder.

Then swirling, twirling, into rich red leaves,

Circling the green and the white,

Came the untamed joy whom nobody sees,
His great antlered team in full flight.

Whirling downward under that tree,

Like a distant gentle thunder,

From riding those winds so wild and free,

In Bethlehem’s full wonder.