for Gaza and Palestine

Saints are our angels in a human form
a St. Christopher, a giant, 7 & half feet
tall able to bear the sins of our world
on his big shoulders in the small form

Of a boy, mere waif who is then born
above the rush of the river on those
broad supports of human will to serve
some larger providence, greater good

Some spirit named Sinta-Santa Claus
or St. Nicholas who came in mid-nite
visit to leave the dowry for three girls
otherwise about to be sold as slaves

And here we are at Memorial of Longest
Night for those who died this year house-
less being held at, oh, St. Paul’s for a first
time ever the light of shortest day beams

Down from the roof open into windows by
renovation as we sit on the new labyrinth
designed (‘they say’ as Trump always says)
by Botticelli such quick trip in historical time

Takes me all the way back to New Grange
in Ireland where the entrance to burial cave
is marked by huge stone engraved with a
triple-double spiral that is itself a labyrinth

Over which on the solstice of the shortest
day of winter and the longest night when
the sun aligns with the lintel over entrance
so the sun shines all the way to womb Earth

To literally all those who gather far within
for, oh, this turn from East to West so fast
oh, this diurnal internal rhythm ever so very
common to all common saints everywhere.

 

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.