The Innkeeper's Wife

A Christmas poem

Photo by Tomas Sobek on Unsplash

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Maybe Christmas is your light-in-darkness holiday; maybe you celebrate a different one, or maybe you just cling to the almanac as it measures the lengthening days. We’re all looking for more light, just lately. We’re all creating light, too — one encounter, one act of attention and generosity, at a time.

Wishing you love, hope, and new life as you travel toward the light. Thank you for shining the way you do, while you’re on the journey.

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THE INNKEEPER’S WIFE                                                             2025


Of course my man turned them away,
late as it was, house full; I was the one
who slipped out, after, pointed to the shed
our own beasts share — an empty stall, fresh straw,
a roof at least. He thanked me then, a smile
as warm as summer; she was breathing deep
and looking far away. Later that night,
when I took out clean water and clean rags
and two worn blankets, how she clung to me,
the sweet small thing, as if I were her mother —
and yes, her time had come. Oh, they were ready;
I saw it in the way he made his body
into a cradle for her, as she labored;
the way that one whole saddlebag was packed
with every soft thing she had sewn, to swaddle
the babe she bore. Stay? Of course I did;
a woman wants another woman near,
and this her first time, clearly — still, a birth
less hard, more kind, than most. There would be shepherds
come later, with strange stories, would be travelers
who brought strange gifts, but what I most remember
is how that babe’s first cry sounded like laughter,
how he stared, clear-eyed, first at his parents’ faces,
the light of them, and then up at the stars,
and laughed again; how his young mother held him
next to her heart, and laughed too, through her tears.

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