The conductor, she cries, the boatman, he calls

The midnight, it whispers: “the light,” it recalls

The black metal tracks without flint without spark

The still of the bay finds a home in the dark

The ghetto, my ghetto, beloved from old days

Its innocence locked in a halcyon haze

The street’s muffled voices secure and serene

Deadbolted, protected, inflected, eighteen

And on the fifth night, the prophet, at rest

His rigor completed, forever, be blessed

The view from his window, his just-rented bounty

Yet, there alone, like a lineman for the county

While Rob, faraway, counts his breaths down from twenty

Disturbed by his day but distracted aplenty

Relief like a skiff peaking on the horizon

While he gets his rest and remains none the wizened

The prophet, awakened, for his task incomplete

—on a night such as this, in such pale, stark relief—

Sees a butcher and baker meet a candlestick maker

A man rich and poor meet a beggarman thief

The world gets so quiet before an explosion

As time moves so slow/quick through tragic implosion

No radiant wonder, a sluice stands undone

At the bend of bay that starts in this riverrun

And now, to the prophet, sent here for this reason

To shepherd, such kindness amidst all the treason

He cradles, he presses, breathes life into light

As an echo of sirens starts slicing the night

*** *** ***

Awakened, he fights off the sense of distress

Which waits for no man and stalks him regardless

With news so impure it metes out only pain

A fathomless instance, a loss for no gain

What do you do in possession of news

That makes you believe there’s a chance you could lose

Any tender grip on some small piece of a whole

That’s been spinning for ages yet out of control

What do you do? What do you do?

What do you do? What do you do?

You lay where you’re leveled, in grief unreserved

You lay where you’re leveled, for that’s what’s deserved

Imagine a heat that can leave a land dried

Undoing your sense and your will from inside

We hundreds, we linger, no mirage or seascape

We vanquished crawl slowly, no thought of escape

Yet, gravity pulls us, compelled to a space

Where rain unrelenting feels so commonplace

Through shock we use hugs, vacant stares and walk aimless

From there through a vigil to honor the blameless

In death’s harshest moments, emerges a grace

To raise up a spirit who can’t be replaced

We prayed and were grateful, we drank, and we moshed

Were soaked by a rain that left none of us washed

Or cleansed by some knowledge of purpose or reasons

Or permitted some thoughts of life’s twists, turns or seasons

Too tired to seek meaning beyond poor remembrance

All vaguely recognized through haunting resemblance

*** *** ***

What am I to do, through these whispering days

Collecting each hour in silent malaise

My fellows regard me with fear and warm lenience

My desperate impatience be damned: inconvenience

I’ve come all this way without citing the light

Extinguished so bluntly in terror, in plight

To speak of my love is to understate depth

And joy and respect, and compassion and breadth

We take all he had, all he was, wrote and said

We divide but are conquered by sadness, by dread

These memories make up a cavernous fill

A beam is cut jagged, a luminous till

The driver at midnight, the miles they accrue

In daze he’s enveloped by evening’s new hue

Is startled and angered and pivots with fears

The lane he’d been riding in just disappears

The road never taken, nor followed, nor seen

It veers into mysteries, humbled, between

The minutes and moments, the instants collide

And rend from us logic, attention and pride

So where did you go, I stayed straight, you went, left

I saw nothing happen, as if through some theft

Where will I find you? Go fast or go slow?

You head to some place only emigrants know

In vanishings I reach to lost explanation

Go wish me luck…I stumble toward inspiration

To lessen a chasm remarkably huge

By chance I am drawn to the lessons of Scrooge

Brought forth by his partner before his descent

At a window Scrooge asks, “Why do they lament?”

Marley says of the ghosts, chained and cloaked in their woe

By the homeless young mother cradling babe in the snow

“They seek to interfere for good in human matters,

And have lost their power forever.” It shatters

The miser who sees his own fate now foretold

Unless he reverses before he’s too old

“Why show me this if I can’t be reformed?”

He will say after nightmares have left him transformed

We glee as he giggles and stands on his head

Traverses his ills and is saved from the dead

I think of that end as I drive town to town

The Pogues, with tin whistles and uilleann pipes drown

While sweet Cait O’Riordan at bass has her say

With vocals on "I'm a Man You Don't Meet Every Day"

Those Christmas Ghosts tarried and worked like the dickens

The Scrooge reclamation complete; the plot thickens

For me, facing humankind’s bitter imposts

And ever-regretful un-tombed Marley’s ghosts

Why show me this unless there is something named

To honor a boy whose compassion was famed?

Be kind to your fellows, embrace and embody

The spirit of light as you inch toward samadhi

The dark metal tracks: must I leave bitterness there?

And grip with all my might to the St. Francis Prayer?

“Lord, make me a channel of thy peace;”

And let me keep at it til my life doth cease