I was the star in the nativity play
(just because no one remembered I was a mime)
I shone behind it all glimmering over the heads
of all the other heads as I followed the wise guys
with a molten center and I arrived on time
over the manger where new born innocence
was just waiting for the thermo-nuclear reactor
to shoot out laser beams of pure light
to jut out at lightning angles at roofline
at horizon line and at the “V” line reaching up
and out for all the space that somehow
gave birth to me and Jesus and the whole
crowd of animals and shepherds and angels
all there together making this thing happen,
a happening just like back in the olden days
when winter was cold and nights so very dark
almost without streets so I could be seen
so bright, so dazzling, so hanging tough
way up there in the sky over it all
with it all with the starry, starry night
so high above this new innocent sweet being
at the center of this impromptu production
I was the star so far behind it all
           ALL ONE THING

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.