a Christmas poem by Marilee Melvin

Softly, softly,

the truth came.

(slow motion salt ocean waves rolling

spreading moving inland,

filling caves and coves and foaming white at breaker’s edge)

No one would have seen it,

No one could have heard it,

But there was one bright star,

And angels sang.

(sunset over the ocean all at once too grand,

too glorious for anything but silence;

sunbursts into sanguine skies: purple pushes

stone silence

into hearts all human and humble)

The truth is hard to our hard hearts.

The best is yet to come:

Word become flesh,

and dwell among us.