The rumpled
training manager from Grand Rapids
is clearly one sheet away from
three sheets to the wind when he blurts it out:

“I don’t care what you think
about the divinity angle — it’s
a heck of a story.  Think about it:
child bride, older man, infant
in a bed of straw, animals (there HAD
to have been animals, man, it was a
freaking stable), and then those kings
and the fancy gifts and the comet
in the sky above:  even if the angels
were a fabrication, the whole damn cosmic order
shows up in that little tale — and there’s death
and taxes, courtesy of Herod —
that’s a heck of a story, as if every element
from human royalty to the plant kingdom
(if you count the straw)
was in communion with the homeless
and the galaxy and the myrrh and all.”

He lifted the glass again,
poured the last of the bourbon
into himself.  “I get tickled
thinking about it.  I mean,
here you and I sit in an airport bar
like we’ve known each other forever,
brought together with all these other nomads
and there’s that bird stuck in the terminal rafters
and the lights on the runway like stars —
I think of the story
and I see it happening
all the time;
and all I have to do
to make it real
is look around wherever I find myself
and find out what’s being born.
I’m not saying
I believe it all happened that way,
of course; and I’m fine with you
believing whatever you want,
I’m just saying
it still keeps on being
a heck of a story,
no matter what you think
of the Virgin Birth part:
something to think about
while we sit here stranded
a long way from home.”

I don’t want to be here,
listening to this,
staring out the big windows
at huge, immobile planes.
I just want to be home.

I don’t want to know this guy
or think about the story
while billowing sheets of snow
scoot across the tarmac
reminding me
that even if there is a hotel room
out there, it’ll be sheer misery
getting to it;
I just want to be home.

But we’re here, the training manager
and the nice young couple with the baby in the corner booth
and all these other random folks,
and I’m here too, and while I’m not going
to take a census of us all,
I bet no one wants to be here right now
hearing this
so far from home.

He’s so loud,
so drunk and getting drunker,
and he smells of something sweet
and pungent, and he keeps talking
while home gets more and more distant
even as we’re sitting still.

I’m not going to tell you
there is any redemption here —

there’s just the story
and the telling
and the wish for the messenger
to keep it to himself
while I wonder about that sparrow
who can’t fly out of here
into the cold of the dark winter storm,
but who will evidently try
till he can try no more.