Holy Night: A (Beth Kephart) Christmas Poem

-->

Holy Night

  

I thought that I was capable:

A girl with a song

On a night bright with the wide-open eyes of the stars.

My father at the piano,

My brother with the sweet reed of the oboe squeezed

Between his lips,

The crisped-skin fry of the Christmas Eve smelts

         Still in the air,

The stockings hung,

My mother and sister on the couch,

One beside the other.

And I was the one,

I was the one who would sing.

My father, as I have mentioned, was at the keys,

My brother was leaning toward his own notes,

In the house that isn’t ours anymore,

In the room where my mother used to be,

By the tree,

In the hours before what we’d thought we’d wanted

Would be received,

At a time when the eyes of the stars were on us,

And it was my turn to sing.