our kind of keep

Epiphany

Tři Králové

is alive today

whether braced

by polar vortex or

graced in Bohemian

balm, Magi still arrive

to focus their perusing

eyes where their camels

maps and heaven guide: a

baby in a feeding trough for

donkeys fast asleep, a mother

and a father keeping watch and

cradling what they’d long to keep

and swains inside to show the King

of David’s line will need their kind of

keep. The meager ware the Magi bring

hardly fits the scene:  the myrrh appalls,

the gold enthralls, the frankincense sheds

all the stable smell for a little while at least

but bothers not the native flock, which deign

to sleep through this epiphany. We are of that

flock—well before Gethsemane—if yet we stay

awake tonight. We’re practiced after all with the

ringing in of new years and vigils with our friends

who newly now assemble here, a life-sustaining sty.

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This:

Epiphany is alive because our Savior died

and we have nowhere else to look or be.