All Over the Place: For Hanukkah and for Christmas

By Michael H. Brownstein

Because years later, we celebrate the Festival of Lights

Do you see the lights in the distance?
The fog erased outline of our treasure?
We are not comfortable with what you did to the Name.

Late afternoon, a spit of sun, sand,
A triumph after the last bloodletting.
Where do we need to go from here?

The temple not destroyed, but desecrated,
Blood graffiti, carcasses of pig,
The ark wide open, spilled oil, broken lamps.

We will not wait until tomorrow to clean,
We are comfortable with who we are,
The mirage of light in the distance our legacy, our hope.

One day’s supply of fuel lasts eight days,
One prayer resonates in song and psalm,
One mount, one Name, a household of praise.

How do we create love?

[The next poem is taken from my book, How Do We Create Love?, recently published by Cholla Needles Press.]

Four days from the start of winter, five days from the great Ursid meteor shower,

six days after the temperature climbed into the sixties, rain fell, froze on contact,

changing everything to white ice, clean and smooth, clear and crunchy.

The man and woman stand outside their small home, logs burning in the fireplace,

candles lit in darker corners, thick sunlight heating everything through thin windows.

It is cold outside. They listen to the scents around them, see the sounds of shadows,

smell the fresh breeze swinging through the bare trees, arms around each other,

scarves across their throats, hats light on their heads, heavy jackets open to the day.

Christmas comes in the morning, he says. I know, she answers. I never asked,

he continues. I did not ask either, she replies. I do not need anything, he says.

Nor I, and she smiles and pauses and lets out a fog of air. We are not like that,

he begins again. We are not like the air you see in this weather when you breath.

We have something stronger and we have something greater. She turns her head to him.

A glitter of light flashes through a nearby evergreen, its needles ripen with sunshine,

each branch flickers and stops – a pause in wind. I know, she answers.

We have all we need. We have a flower blossom and an agate and he kisses her lightly.

That is all I have ever needed and will ever need, he says, the flint strong within him,

the day blue-lit, the forest strong and healthy, rainbows slipping from the eaves.

Love is created in many ways. This is but one of them.

Copyright © 2019 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively.