Christmas in July

Behold this inverted nativity scene;

see the crèche undone.

No eager shepherds here,

                only the weeping family.

No wise men with gifts and gold

                but doctors and nurses with morphine.

Not a manger, but a hospice bed.

This isn’t the midnight birth

of an infant babe – a firstborn son,

but the cancerous fading of a husband father;

both heralded by an angelic choir:

Gloria in excelsis deo

(2008)