A Christmas Cross In The Gathering Darkness Poem by William He

A Christmas Cross in the gathering darkness
By William He

There dwells the Hallowed Holy Mother, fir-souled,
In verdant gauze, by older, colder laws,
Her gaze—two quarry-pools of frost—holds.
Through pierced-stable air, as if in flawless Jade,
A realm where even shadows hold their breath,
So light, this vigil-light the cedars shed.
A jasper bough distills the green-gauze gloom,
Unfurls a chessboard on the oak-wood loom,
Star-sigils murmur, whisper-weights of myth.
On velvet-lichen skin of north and stone,
Where candle-glow is shed to highest gloom.

The colour flags whirl.
Sharp ginger chimes---a sugar-glass,
Green mist, a dampened mass,
Halts the sleigh's sigh.
Then, sudden as a psalm,
Ice-hoofed, the reindeer tread the rooted calm，
And shatter firmament to bright, blind spray.
Each glory born is glanced, then swept away,
Through vaults of air, those blue-veined, winding seams,
Toward the obelisk that fades, a ghost of beams.
All but the cross, which tmarks the cipher of this sacred place,
The curved staff whispers of the road back home.