The View of the TEM: A View of Nativity Scenes

(For Bianca Jones, the Skelton brothers, and all the missing babies.)

Neighbors placed a Nativity scene in the front yard,
nestled the Holy Family in a baby’s playhouse,
a Crayola colored crèche festooned with strings of lights
to keep Baby Jesus, Joseph, and Mary safe from the elements.
“Bless them,” I say when I see it with a chuckle and a smile.
Bless them for doing the best they can with what they have.

The brand new megachurch two blocks over had one, too.
Caged their Nativity scene behind a wrought iron finialed fence
to “protect it from the harmful neighborhood element,” they said.
The Wise Men carried no treasure. Mary lay in sooty snow bank
near the minister’s new Mercedes. The manger held no baby.
Bless the blasphemers, I say, shaking my head.
Bless them even if they don’t appreciate the blessings.

A knock at my door brings angelic faces staring up at me.

Their voices sing out, not with hopeful holiday carols, but with
the woeful tale of Miss Ma’am’s missing blessed baby taken
from her antique nativity scene she lovingly placed every year in her yard.
Please help us bring Miss Ma’am’s baby back home, they said,
then left to knock on another neighbor’s door, tell another the tragic tale.
Bless the babies who care enough to look for the lost babies,
I say through tears as silent as a child’s footfalls in newly fallen snow.
Bless the children whose voices are just as fragile, just as silent.

On the news, I hear stories of mothers flailing, of fathers failing,

stories of children created to carry the weight of weariness,
the burdens brought by those who should deliver them from harm.
Bless the brutes who lash out like the wounded animals they are, I sadly say.
They were babies too; battered, belittled, stunted by pain,
unable to cope with the world they didn’t create but in which they dwell,
unable to understand or control the cold creatures they’ve become.

I look out my window at my neighbor’s improvised Nativity.

Watch in wonder as lights dance in the dark across the Crayola crèche,
a discarded playhouse transformed into a sincere state of grace.
Bless the babies brought forth to bear their creator’s burdens,
babies born, begrudged for existing, then banished , I say as a prayer.
They do not deserve the suffering, the shunning to which they are yoked.
The deserve only unconditional love.

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