Riding the F Line Under the Star of Bethlehem

Christmas Eve I rode the late night bus down Market. The tourists and drag queens have all but deserted this line by now. I was just a passenger being transported to nowhere with people who ask nothing and expected less. In the back seat, an old woman dressed in layers of mission clothes chanted a nursery rhyme and rocked gently back and forth like a child afraid to go to sleep. The ancient ninja in faded black with a worn frame and tired eyes fought the spirits of past wars with slow movements of tai chi, conquering them in mid-air, then bowing to nobody. At Powell, under the Christmas Star, I got off knowing I was almost home and they weren’t really any crazier than anyone else.

**

The Christmas Club of Lonely

She sits behind the computer screen, listens to Bing sing White Christmas at midnight and takes comfort in the light as it warms her face. Numb to the vodka she chills in the freezer, she types sad poems and blogs them to other lonely people in this world. She writes how she can’t go on anymore the way things are going and other midnight poets tell her to hang in there and she is loved. On holidays, she visits my site and says my lonesome poems make her feel sad, but at least they make her feel something.

Tonight, she rattles the half full bottle of pills and takes a drink not sure if she has had enough.

**

whisper when i stop

i stand alone on resurrection
ground under a crescent moon

it is warm for december these days
the seasons move in inches…slower

tonight against a blue black mountain
i count those that have left

bones scattered but memories held
together like a daisy chain pressed

in the family bible tucked away
waiting to be discovered one day

remembered touched by a child’s hands
on some summer sunday

i walk on sacred ground under
a new moon never casting a shadow

hear only the sounds of dry leaves
the color of copper rake together when I walk

nothing but the wind’s
whisper when i stop