On Rosetti’s
“A Baby Is a Harmless Thing”
Harvey S. Mozolak
A lion is a captive thing
Behind strong bars in zoo displays
the sun’s bright high and holy ring
His golden mane like rays
The cage is littered with a floor of straw
Its cold and wet is hardly meet but raw
The wind the door by which he came
To Judah land and tribe to free
Become our King of all the beasts
Within his is now a mild wildness
As angels hold their roar to see
He who overpowering
Could claw and maul
Yet offers a thin and thirsty feast
To take and eat our fearful fall
garland
Harvey S. Mozolak
boughs of green
angel-feathered
over the doorway
to time
the entering trembles
for the hour knows the honor
of the eternal
bending and bowing
to breath and breathing
the infant’s
first lung’s exhalation
a trumpet of mercy
to the farthest sea
the most distant land
the marooned and frozen
hidden hearts
remote from God
left-up adornments
Harvey S. Mozolak
accidentally forgotten
a wooden angel
on a bedroom fan pull
a glass star dangling
down a clear filament
from the living room ceiling
the marks on the wall
in increments where the toddler’s height
was marked and measured
with a carpenter’s careful eye
except these measure
the downfall of glory
in the pull of the gravity
of our grave depression
unadorned
purposely remembered
announcement
Harvey S. Mozolak
the girl leaned over
hand over hand
lifting the rock deep
cold water
with a wet rope
to pour into her clay vessel
“Mary!”
she dropped
the bowl
and in the splash
the flash of light
voiced
like lightning on the sea
the angel stood by the wood
of a tree
beside the well
his hand or wing or flame
held in speaking
silence peace and greater greeting
than even his heavenly bearing bore
from beyond above
where the name is seen
but never said
let it be but…
how can the sun be within the earth
and more magnificent
the Lord within me?
yad-touched by God
(yad - Hebrew ritual pointer
used in reading untouched Torah )
angel: music notations
Harvey S. Mozolak
surely they will not hear our high notes
we will have to treble almost all of the gloria
down and softer
like the lowing of cattle
a murmuring of doves
and the settling sounds
of lambs and ewes
and our brightness
dim to dawn and dusk’s golds
lest we blind them
when they see
how fragile is his hold on his life
yet somehow our paean must praise
his tenacious grasp
reaching to hold the wood
baton of blessing
directed to heal their pain
first tune
Harvey S. Mozolak
none lullaby the virgin’s labor
her moans of pain
break the silence of the night
yet the Father knows
heaven pangs
at the giving of the perfect peace
the prince of the good of grace
left upon the barn’s golden field lace
soft notes of the song of salvation
Father and fatherly
Harvey S. Mozolak
sweetly Joseph cut
from the field
beyond the city’s low broken wall
some tender Sharon roses
and placed them on the straw strands
near his beloved and the one they loved
who loved the world
and all its weeds
God the Father stemmed the stars
using several comets to vase
and spread their light as ferns
among the blossoms
of gathering angel wings
dark deep after sun down
Harvey S. Mozolak
the loose thatch and timber slats
allow the light through the roof
from the moon and the stars
and somehow from the hillside fires
where shepherds camp with their flocks
most on the way up the road
to Shalem and the burning blaze
and sweet smoke
of Zion’s high altar
more light than the night normally affords
touching the face of the child
his mother calling him
her little lamb as the carpenter
arranges him
on the wood frame he has formed
for bedding above the bowled stone
where animals feed
the donkey asleep and the cow
watching with an unmoving head
but old observing eyes
they turn
the rustling at the doorway
announces some have come
with lanterns, staves and cloaks of skins
who must have heard
the infant cry at the light from the sky
among winged winds singing
in the high meadows
where there is more light
than the night normally affords
they will tell of sight and song
seen and heard of holiness
burning and bright then on the hill
and now on the cold dark hay
heard by this night flock gathered
before God’s seh
(seh - Hebrew for lamb)
masses in motion
Harvey S. Mozolak
a slit in the sky
a star parting the night
with light
the lamp of the angels
first carolers of the incarnation
this candle pillar
powered by peace
radiance eternal
above
the congregated custodians
of a quiet quilt of wool
as the entrance hymn
of the first mass
among the mounds
of ground that surround
Bethlehem
a moaning mound of flesh
bears heaven and earth
as one
winter
Harvey S. Mozolak
there are those who look for a winter rose
an unseasonably warm Eve
or Christmas Day to say
that something special has happened
and touches nature again when
all it takes is to look into each other’s eyes
and know that God has come down through the skies
to be a warm one of us whether young to old
he is with us even through three deadly days of cold
^
Harvey S. Mozolak
With a drawn lower stem
a simple symbol of a seasonal stock
the insertion mark in typography
indicating the place for a missing Word
spear-head for addition
before subtraction
usually two lines often blood-red
outline of a “little roof”
as it is called in one tongue
protecting emptiness beneath
His however inverted inserted
down and descending
mäkčeň in Slovak the diacritical notation
is a letter glyph
an ornament calling forth a certain silence
speaks a softening of sound
the lines of a caron
evergreen every-one ever-equal and eternal
the tri-love of God emptied
the Trinity opened and poured out
sent from and in and with
the Father’s faithful love
conceived by the Holy Spirit’s deep
and lasting power to comfort
in the pure and perfect jewel of grace
torn and thrown
from the divine diadem’s peak
an unseen plunging Victory
Human triad
tall Joseph braced by a beam
with Mary bent in blessing
and our small God molding
a human triangle
ting a ringing gloria
