Christmas party at the South Danbury Church in  General   

December twenty-first
we gather at the white Church festooned
red and green, the tree flashing
green-red lights beside the altar.
After the children of Sunday School
recite Scripture, sing songs,
and scrape out solos,
they retire to dress for the finale,
to perform the pageant
again: Mary and Joseph kneeling
cradleside, Three Kings,
shepherds and shepherdesses. Their garments
are bathrobes with mothholes,
cut down from the Church's ancestors.
Standing short and long,
they stare in all directions for mothers,
sisters and brothers,
giggling and waving in recognition,
and at the South Danbury
Church, a moment before Santa
arrives with her ho-hos
and bags of popcorn, in the half-dark
of whole silence, God
enters the world as a newborn again.

By Donald Hall

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Other poems by Donald Hall:

• A Poet at Twenty
• Affirmation
• An old life
• Christmas party at the South Danbury Church
• Distressed Haiku
• Je Suis une table
• Mount Kearsarge Shines
• Name of Horses
• Sudden Things
• The Alligator Bride
• The Man In The Dead Machine
• Villanelle
• White Apples
• Wolf Knife