christmas poem

The Second Before My iPod Shuffles

For Blade

I.

Technology gives the gift of random

To which I give my right to choose

away to the ghosts inside the gears,

the rights to fill my ears with blues

or landslides, muddy waters, speares, 

hem and tangos, sandstorms, jazz,

Madonna, ABBA, midnight mass.

I want a melody to fit my mood

Hard and loud or sleek and smooth.

And anxious wait and pressed between

the staccatoed silence of a magazine.  

II.

But it’s oh so quiet, 

on the cusp of words,

Look right, 

look left, 

look right again.

Tap your foot in the grocer’s line,

Count down for Christmas break to begin.

But then,

The pregnant pause gives way to noise

(we cross the street or find a wife.)

the song’s a healthy baby boy,

A baby crying with us in the night.

I wrote this Christmas poem for Blade, who I barely knew, for my poetry class three years ago.  I can't even remember why I wrote it for him; I think it was in response to one of his poems but I'm not sure.  Funny that three years later he ended up helping me record my song and that he recently found a wife (who is awesome and who I had a lot of connections with before)!  It's wonderful who God places in your life for a short season and then all the beautiful and surprising recapitulations that can happen later.  

This poem remains unedited since its original conception.