Unto the Least of These

I feel, almost, as though it were unfair

That I should have these memories

Of Christmas

And others less fortunate go

Never knowing

How it was—bouncing

Mother’s baskets on our knees

During our journey through town

On the buckboard.

We had packed that food like children

Eternally hungry,

But those sweetbreads

Were for someone dearer than even we were dear:

The poor who needed

Turkey dinner almost as much as we

Needed to take it to them.

And so I think to myself how lucky I was

To have had these memories:

My mother’s red jams sparkling from jars

Never opened or touched by one of us;

And a few round oranges,

Wrapped in paper, we got but once a year;

And all of us, eyes wide,

Wondering who it was special enough

To have the same at Christmas as we hoped to have.

These were moments I can only whisper with reverence:

Afraid my father’s chimney hat would topple

While the horses clipped the streets

And he struck out toward the west of town,

And we all huddled down in quilts

And chattered, sang, and thought to ourselves,

If these are the least and they are the same

As though we’d done it unto Him,

He must be poor

And live in shacks lit sometimes only by the moon.

And many a Christmas night I’ve walked in radiant streets,

Not sharing half that joy I once felt then

To see the children laughing in the darkened doors

And father’s bristling head of hair bowing low,

While he nearly dumped the biscuits on the floor.

We count ourselves among the lucky ones

Who listened for the Christ child

Year after year

And found him in our childhood close to home

And heard him in our prayers.

The answers topple from our memories now

As though the ends of waiting hurl like ribbons

Streaming into a patterned clasp.

Our woven images of life are spun from knowing

We once knew him

In our growing past.