(In A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to come shows Scrooge a pawn shop where in one possible future the sheets and curtains of his bed and the clothes he died in would be sold)
An Advent wreath from Venezuela
God, it’s not the sheets and blankets
of the bed I’ve been lying in –
but stripped and for sale
is the fabric of the earth –
the curtains of the polluted sky,
the gravestones of the fracked land
and mountain tops
removed for mining.
The fish are my business,
and birds of the air that will sing
or will be silent
because of what I do.
The climate is my business,
And keeping Christmas all year long,
is swaddling all God chose
and chooses still.
Gifts in Open Hands 