A Poem for Christmas Eve

There's a dark line, by December, running
down from Mary's diaphragm and across her
navel, a dark line
on one of the darkest
days of the year
by which time she's
been carrying him
for nine long months

Her feet ache
and her breasts ache
and her hands can barely grip anymore
any minute the reins will slip through her thick fingers
and maybe she'll fall down off the donkey
and cry for a good long while
on the side of this dusty
distant, cramped
Judean road.

Joseph says this whole town is full to bursting,
and she just says, "I know."
He's trying to ask her opinion,
wants her to tell him what to do, she
supposes, or maybe just to give him her
permission to do
whatever must be done.

But Mary's brain has been flooded,
washed clean out,
by the work of tending her inside:
a secret place,
where her son can rest his head
immersed in her water,
nourished by her blood.

If she can carry him
another mile
another hour
That great and terrible moment will come
when he bursts forth into this world

to teach us all
how to be born.