by Zach Kincaid

Everything
drop-
ped.
Heavy gravity.
Heaven stumbled into the magnetic prop
that is Earth.
The eighth day summoned awake
the divine,
who kept the habit
of snooping
on anything high-
mountaintops and snake-eyed staffs
and as Babel's King-Kong,
pushing down
weedy gardens,
holding up
gilded sanctuary,
an arm not too short to bang
the clouds awake with fistfuls of fire or
swoop into the song-and-dance
of Deborahs and Elijahs,
two-stepping rage and reward
in a broken cycle.

By the furnace of Babylon, we saw
your shadowy figure with Shadrach
Meshach, and Abednego.
Is it just a story to furnish
a God who hadn't forgotten-
a God who knows?

Years talked their way into legends
sliced by Maccabean swords
(for Isaiah is far too dreamy),
carving out, forcing onward,
bloody deliverance–
warrior messiahs who rekindled
hopeful flame:

(He extended the glory of his people.
Like a giant he put on his breastplate;
he bound on his armor of war and waged battles,
protecting the camp by his sword.
He was like a lion in his deeds,
like a lion's cub roaring for prey.
He searched out and pursued those who broke the law;
he burned those who troubled his people. - I Maccabees 3:3-5)

Then, something happened that wasn't supposed to happen.

Angels hit Judea's ground
with new parts of God,
good news mixed with strange events.
100 years since the Hasmonean conquest failed,
and now nine months later the skies couldn't hold in
a new conquest–a foreign invader–a babe of when the
stars dropped and became guideposts again.
Jacob reopened his staircase
And the kingdom of heaven intimately
kissed the kingdom of earth.
The hovering God was grounded–
crashed out of a womb, in a cradle built
by men, in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.

Hosanna in the highest.