I ache for that long-lost Advent-light,
guiding me from distant childhood.
Each December it was dusted down,
hung over the bulb & hallowed the hall.
It recalled the Magis' Star, that once
hovered over that ramshackle stable.

Deep orange star-shape; glow — burn on.
Scorch my heart with your affection.
See that cosy cosmos, pin-pricked light
seeping through the patterned sieve.
O, Shekinah-presence, relight deep wonder in me!

Church of Ireland carollers serenaded 
this boy's dead spirit with Incarnational hope.
Tweedy types warbled with uneven gusto,
black hymnals open, haloed under streetlights.
Did Screwtape wryly smile at this uncertain army?

Once I joined these amateur carol singers;
gang-pressed into collecting coins,
I nervously trod, uninvited,
up Protestant-owned pebbled drives.
Behind tasteful frosted glass 
blurred figures approached slowly.
Were those doors opened with a sigh?
While lavishly dispensing their half-crowns,
did those parishioners pity this cub-caroler?

Oh, how I ache for that lonesome star-light!
I search for this grail religiously in parish jumble sales.
Surely somewhere there is one, languishing in some attic,
awaiting re-union with this somewhat-wise man....

But are these childhood Christmases true?
I remember Sunday school attendance stamps:
biblical scenes, illustrating the old, old story —
royal blues, princely purples & eastern gold, 
seen in the dimly lit, dark wooden pews 
during the drone of high church sermons.

The majestic, brass-eagle lectern gospel readings
never quite took flight in this heart then
but now those holy words are housed in this heart;
& that sentimental childhood star fades with lost time.

Louis Hemmings was born in 1957, the third child of pioneering Irish hand-weavers/fashion designers. In 1969 he went to a Quaker co-ed boarding school by choice, to escape divorcing parents. He became a convinced Christian at the age of 18 and found himself under the influence of Jack Clemo, a blind and deaf Christian poet from Cornwall. He is married with two boys (and a girl, stillborn). Ten years ago he started Samovar, a used online theological book business, which is now his principal job. He has had a number of poems published in Poetry Ireland and Hot Press (Ireland's answer to Rolling Stone).