Christmas Questions

You ask yourself tonight
in the quiet after the small lights are lit:
What is my worth now?

Outside, winter holds the fields
with its patient hands.
Nothing moves except the slow breathing
of the dark.

Do not be troubled
that joy seems distant.

Even the manger
was not surrounded by music at first.
There was only a small animal warmth,
the rough patience of straw,
and a child beginning
his fragile astonishment at the world.

You ask another question,
more difficult:

Am I still a father
when no child’s hand reaches for mine?

Listen.

The tree in winter does not ask
whether it remains a tree
when its branches stand empty.

Deep beneath the frozen ground
its roots continue
their quiet holding.

So too the invisible bonds of a life.
What has once been given
does not vanish.

It changes its dwelling.

The world praises fullness—
tables crowded with voices,
rooms bright with laughter.

But the stars above the winter fields
shine without witness.

They are sufficient to themselves.

So must you learn
a more silent belonging.

You say:
What father stands alone on Christmas Eve?

Perhaps the one
whose heart has been broken open enough
to let a larger light pass through.

Do not despise these fractures.

The wound is often
the place where the future enters us.

You ask, finally,
what you are to become now.

But life does not answer
such questions quickly.

Even the shepherds
stood long in the cold night
before the sky changed.

Be patient with your becoming.

Lay your questions gently
into the winter darkness.
It knows how to keep them.

What you are
does not depend
on who has returned to you.

You are.

And sometimes
that is the quiet beginning
from which a life
may grow again.