365 Poems: Sweet Little Baby Jesus

This poem was written (once again) for our last Gotham Writer's Workshop assignment, which was a collaboration poem. We were given several options for collaborating, so I asked a classmate, Gloria, if she'd like to try a little back-and-forth writing. We ended up writing two poems that way, and here's one of them.

Sweet Little Baby Jesus

Christ, you're back: Once again
You've resurrected yourself.
Overnight the world is replaced by another world:
Pure, each branch limned in white,
Cacophony, chaos, consumed in
contradiction: Silence comes.

"Drive safely. Heaven can wait," says a sign
on the Batesville Casket Company truck,
But tomb, manger, crass commercialism --
Not even these can contain you.
In this frantic season of elusive peace,
you fade like tiny bubbles in the wedding wine.
Fade, then rise again: Each December
a little Easter, a baby's bounce,
another divine enfant born to suffer
this insufferable world.