^{When it’s Christmas we’re all of us magi.   
—Joseph Brodsky}

A gaunt star leans out from the crown,  
and along the skirt, a practiced randomness  
of gifts grows like a moraine. 

It bulges to excess  
as we stack the rest. Our boy’s in bed.  
Tapers stretch their resinous 

legs on the tablecloth in deepening red.  
And when he wakes, as he must,  
to miracle, I’ll think of Herod 

while he scours the many with a lust  
for more. How some are taken.  
How even he is just a guest.