Christopher Childers

O Holy Night

Home again for another lukewarm Memphis December.

                       Scattered on Presbyterian benches,

everyone’s smaller and older-looking than I remember;

                       numbers have dwindled in tandem with inches.

Carol, always my favorite, is singing. Her voice is a ghostly

                       snowglobe swirling around her, gusting,

carrying with it our shaken, listening spirits. Mostly

                       no one is thinking of dinner, or lusting.

Music has too few whistles and bells for the bored adolescent

                       Mary & Joseph, around whom bedwetting

angels with pipe-cleaner haloes are thinking less of the present

                       than of the presents they know they’ll be getting;

Mary cradles her doll like an iPhone—maybe to ponder

                       texts from a Joseph who might like (or love) her?

How to endure the doubt, the wait, whatever’s beyond her?

                       Meanwhile, the notes soar upward and hover

over us all like gilding or grace as we hunker contritely,

                       guilty of something, white heads nodding,

vanishing soon enough, withdrawing as wind, with the pews politely

                       sucking in breath, and no one applauding.

          (quo nos cumque feret melior fortuna parente ibimus)

Christopher Childers is the author of the Penguin Book of Greek and Latin Lyric Verse, published by Penguin Classics in March 2024. His work has appeared in The Yale Review, The Kenyon Review, Smartish Pace, Literary Matters, and elsewhere. He is a recent transplant to Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and teaches Latin.