In the crèche arranged on the piano each Christmas,
the clay face of the virgin mother is eternally beaming
at the miracle child in his swaddling clothes,
and the miracle child is sleeping, always peacefully sleeping,
no matter how loudly my son pretends he’s a race car, no matter
how many people are laughing in the kitchen.
And Joseph, he is looking out across the piano
as if staring through the stable, staring through centuries,
perhaps, as if he can already see the tables upended
in the temple, can already smell the sweetness
of shared loaves and the pungency of fish, can hear
Mary weeping, or is it me he hears, playing piano
and singing about the hopes and fears of all the years,
then pausing to ask my children not to argue, please,
and to use their kindest voices with each other—and they
continue to bicker. Meanwhile the shepherd and his sheep
gaze up at the crack in the wall in awe, as if there were stars there,
stars brightly shining, and yonder, breaking, a new and glorious morn.