In the End

That Christmas comes

at the end,

in the final breaths

of a wasting year,

is best.

After the muscle-ache

of trekking graveside and back,

graveside and back;

after the haunting loneliness—

of beauty-gazing and solo-missions,

of incomprehensible party chatter,

of home without its people;

after the long war—

the blitzkrieg of unrelenting lies,

and the magnitude of battles lost;

after plundered strength

and fetters of pain

and soiled dreams shoved under the bed;

into the dull ache of life,

Christmas comes,

bearing this memory—

that into awful darkness

and the apparent silence of God,

Christ comes

in the end.