Island Christmas
Under the canopy of sleeping pills,people are cramped weatheringthe endless storm of loss and disappointment.There is no battening down the hatches.Memories float to the top.They think of loved oneswaiting for the word and sacrament;the redemption from their subtracted life.Christmas Island is a cageof case workers and a thousand menwith a tightrope of a thousand crazy uses.No longer can I say it is not my fault;that it is their choice to get on a boat.What price is hope? I have thoughtto swap places with them,give them my home, my bed,so they can stretch out their folded selves,see how strong they can be.I don't care what religion they are.These are my brothers.I want them birthed from this toxic wombto celebrate Christmas with them.
Marlene Marburg
Incarnation
'Were we led all the way forBirth or Death?'Journey of the Magi, T.S Eliot
Oh, they all come some distanceeach in their own way like Godbrothers, sisters, becoming fleshfor tinselled December 25th,after a year of voice mail, email,telephone conversations nothing at all? one stepping out of their car air-conditionedfrom some close in suburbthat may as well be as faras the South Pole; another, sliding out of a taxithat met them at the Greyhound down townthat met them at the airlinethat jetted them high over desertand red outback just greening in the first of the wet
to break in on the Great Dividing Range like Dawn.
But who among them will saythey did not wrestle with clingingto the beds they've made and prefer to lie ontheir stubbies or perhaps the pleasure of a cigarette,the heaven of a barbecue in their own backyardand the angelic conversation of their old mates?Who among them will think think nothing of reversal to the womb; live the child woman man, be glad to take on themselves a death?
Pauline Reeve
Old churches
Like scaly frill-necked lizards sitting on a rock, old churches assemble themselves in bush retreats. Weathered and sacrificial, things have flown off: pigeons in the belfry, the roof of the outhouse. They tug at the years like a bell-rope,