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Photograph by Donna Marie
Bergeniao 11/11/2003
A Thought for Today
Each encounter that becomes a friendship
turns into a lifeline. One can never have too many, only too many to
take care of.
FROM the¨BOOKS
ANOTHER THANK YOU
Thank you for
kissing me
in the elevator last night.
Holidays meant little
when I was young,
only supper at separate tables
from the grown-ups.
So thank you for the flowers
and the snow this morning
and for jam from the delicatessen
and for loving me.
Thank you for this one-room world.
(All I need
when you are here.)
Today while lying face to face
with love again
I closed my eyes to seasons and to skies
and I was younger than I've ever been.
Thank you.
- from
"Love's Been Good To Me", 1979
BETHLEHEM BC
You could hear
the flapping of their wings
for some distance -
not a sudden rush
or panic made by masses
but a slow coming together
quietly in the air.
Then, following that yellow highway
that the star provided
into Bethlehem they came.
Slow. Slow. Quietly.
like snowfall making up it's mind
before a winter downpour
And winter it was.
On the ground
we huddled - first in awe,
then in fright
thinking it miracle enough
that our important lives
should be interrupted
by creatures on a winter's eve
who flew above us and beyond us,
to settle in the barnyard
at the other end of town.
(We make up miracles to suit ourselves
and so we knew these winged persons
had been sent for our amazement,
and not to please the cattle
in an unremembered farmer's barn.)
Were you there ?
But file into the barn they did
while some kept vanguard in the air
as though imagining they guarded
some important person
living there.
Some of us went home,
having seen them with no ill effect.
In the morning there'd be stores to open,
pigs to feed
and stories to enlarge upon
concerning what had happened
on the night before.
Were you there?
-from "The Carols of Christmas," 1967, 1971
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