#86 A WOMAN'S BRIEFS -- A BARNYARD CHRISTMAS - 1989
From the book, “A Special Day” Illustration by Jeannie Grisham
This poem was started in 1989 but my ’91 journal says it “wouldn’t finish itself until this (’91) year.
A BARNYARD CHRISTMAS
Quiet, Quiet, speak not at all
As frost-stockings slip over hillside and stall.
Night yields to light and to morning’s strong call.
Christmas carols rise as a loud barnyard bawl.
The Pig, mud-plastered, with straw on his snout
Is certain he’s figured this strange morning out.
He squeals, then snorts forth a prophet’s great shout,
“Look! Here! A baby is born!”
The nervous Cock loses interest in worms,
Vigorously steps up his sashays and turns,
He anxiously preens so that none miss his beauty.
He struts against talk of a human event occurring
Right under his bright yellow beak.
He hastens to cockily pout with his feet.
Quiet, Quiet, speak not at all
Silently gaze at this old, dirty stall
Let animals gathered report to us all.
Flies share the space where the donkey stands sunning,
Stomping, tail-flicking sores that are festered and running,
Life in the stable is filled with complaint, but
The donkey’s new bawling is tender, and faint.
He plods to the manger long emptied of food,
His eyes gaze down in a deep, knowing mood.
Lord of the beasts, long before people did claim you,
I think I shall daringly set forth to name you, he said,
Spewing whinnies and frost on a small infant’s face.
You live for much more than a lost human race.
I think I shall name you, ‘God, Small in Our Stall,’
By this name we claim you as Lord of us all.
Your brief time of safety is not in man’s house
But here, in a barnyard with sheep, cock, and mouse.
Here alone you are offered a brief time of play.
Only here (you will learn), are you sent on your way
With worship and gifts and the sky’s angel chorus
--Nearly as fine in their manner of singing as
That of the livestock with collars a-ringing—
Lord of the Beasts; God, Small in Our Stall,
We welcome you here, as Lord of us all.
Thank God we moderns were absent that first Christmas day
When animals offered a moment of play.
Our goal would have been to provide central heating,
To freshen the straw,
Shush the bawling and bleating.
No hallelujahs from us would abound
Till we hastily wired for taping, and sound,
Cleaned every corner, and swept all around,
And ordered the baby more properly bound.
Thank God we were absent that first Christmas day,
When barn creatures caroled in their creaturely way.
Quiet, Quiet. Speak not at all,
Lest humans should offer a lock for the stall.
