Come Christmas, for a Portrait of Your Children
by Sam Silva
For your children
for that season of frost
and Jesus songs
among the pedigree
of this Jerusalem
…among the brittle and the lost
as well
snowing on the town and city
and the sea of tarnished hungry men
who long for love
to come and take them
from this hell
For a portrait of your children made of innocence
and fire
…she will paint the thing, I guarantee
that moves
some western tending star among the stars
…the plasmas and the gases!
…the force and flame of what we are
…the sap asleep within the stem
in these cold times.
And the faces of your children
will become their poetry
for this deft intuition
that the artist
like an angel weeping
at the church and alter gives.
A poetry like Blake
…yet innocent as nursery rhymes
…come Christmas
for a portrait of your children
in this place
where Jesus lives!
volume 11(6)
This poem is copyright © 2007,
Sam Silva, all rights reserved.
Find more poems by Sam Silva.
The Web Projects of Sondra Ball and Mario Cavallini
