From Adventure
‘White Christmas’
By Mark Greene
Published by Muddy Pearl

Some dreams may come true:

       Chestnuts roasting on an open fire,
The soothing cool of Mediterranean blue,
The rustling shimmer of wedding white.

The old seer’s dream,
His eye scoured of fanciful self-delusion,
Saw this:

       A cedar hacked to a stump,
Springing to a new shoot;
The village virgin’s impossible boy
Crowned universal king;

       The innocent prince pinned
Against the protesting sky
By the dark insistent lie
Of his adulterous bride.

This dream,
Sure in its renewed proposal,
The eternal breeze whispering our name,
The desert heart fountaining with joy,

This dream,
Real in her expectant womb,
Real in the blooded planks of that severed tree
And the blast-bright fullness of his empty tomb,

This dream

Came true.