Bearing Witness

Emily Dickinson had much to share with the world about life, and love, death and hope, and being human on a planet that has much to learn about compassion and forgiveness. Maybe most about hope. "Hope," she wrote, "is a thing with feathers That perches in the soul."

Here is one she wrote called: This Is My Letter To The World

This is my letter to the world
That never wrote to me
The simple news that Nature told
With tender Majesty

Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see
For love of her,
Sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me.

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And so, Christmastime is when hope perches in the soul of mankind perhaps more than at any other time of year, with its message of peace and goodwill. Here then is my Christmas message to all of you, my friends whose hands I cannot see, in the form of a question, many questions:

BETHLEHEM IN PLEIADES

Is there a Bethlehem
in Pleiades? --
A manger
made of stranger stuff
than hay
where a virgin,
silver-eyed and young
and far from home
laid another Babe
called Christ? --
Or is he called by different names
in Pleiades?
Was it a thousand
thousand years ago
or yesterday
he ran across the four-starred
square of Pegasus
and Lyrae
and Persei?
Is it, in all
the deep Manvantaras of space,
Christmas?
Is it winter on Arcturas?
Do angels carol and rejoice
in Andromeda
to an infant
born only NOW --
light years across the universe
among strange six-hoofed beasts
that stand and low and bray,
thunderstruck?
Do they see
just NOW
the star?


MERRY CHRISTMAS!