Midnight, Christmas Eve

So simple, on a night like this, to lose

all fear and lean too far out on the bridge 

in admiration of the stars that throw 

themselves into black water

and disappear. From the river’s edge 

a song begins, flung up from the cathedral, 

lifted through its ribs of stone

past its candled arches and its domes

to icy sky, a sound that feels

as pure, unreal as snow falling upward. 

The portal is thrown open with the force

of something that wants to be alive.

Song like this could spark a fire 

from hopeless wood, or give birth 

out of stricken earth to forests 

of branch and leaf and bud.

Across the city, a girl’s hair swings 

against her cheek, her hands feel 

kicking feet, a heartbeat. 

The great vault with all its singing 

swoops down to look, to where she looks,

a cathedral turned to cradle, the cradle

a gently ribbed cathedral, deep as the sky, 

starlit, ready to be filled.

(Excerpted from Over The Moon by Imtiaz Dharker, with permission from Bloodaxe Books)