Family Portrait/Advent

 

Family Portrait/Advent

(“The rich and the poor meet together. The Lord is the maker of them all.” Proverbs 22:2)

Do your ears hear the same carols
floating from the trees as winged birds sing
in air grown crisp toward the end of the year?
Do your eyes see the same sunlight
creeping over the hills, the same fog
opening to reveal the day?

Do your babies cry like rain,
your children play ball until sunset,
your thoughts fill your mind like winter champagne?
Do you visit your muse to find the silence you seek?

I remember the blue slate siding with a dozen layers
of paint beneath the cracks.
I remember the first time I walked to school in the snow,
plastic bags over my little tennis shoes,
and I was late. A couple of inches of snow in
west Texas
will always slow a six-year-old. My
hand-me-down pants were cold and wet.

The children raced to the feasting table first
but had learned through instruction and habit
to wait for the elders to be served. Bright eyes
looked up to meet some eyes sad, some flittering,
some distant, some weary, and others gladly receiving
a place in line saved by little mouths. One time
an elder placed two deviled eggs on each child’s
plate.

Do you sit across from a little not your own,
next to a neighbor who lost everything that made them
well-known in town?
Did you hear the stories of sweaty days repainting a house
where the sun snuck through the cracks?
Did you find the place that eases suffering by the
simple touch of hand and face? Did you walk
the dirt road until everyone’s feet ached the same?