The ox knoweth his owner and

the ass his master’s crib. 

Isaiah 1:3

The erstwhile holy father in a book

on the infancy of Jesus, Christ the Lord,

debunked the angels we have heard on high

and banished beasts from the Nativity.

those manger scenes and creches notwithstanding,

those figurines of lowly animals,

their steamy exhalations warming the babe,

more myth, so says the pope, than scriptural.

My jack ass, Charles, has begun to mope

around the haggard, inconsolable

as that giant Canaanite and erstwhile saint

who shouldered Christ across the river once,

downsized, alas, to “Mister” Christopher,

by another pope, who some few years ago

consigned him to the hinterlands of faith.

As for Charles, my gelded, piebald ass,

who’s borne such burdens as were his to bear,

on Sundays carting Christians off to Mass

much as a forbearer bore Mary hence,

fat, gravid with God’s Lamb to Bethlehem,

the way lit by a guiding star’s bright light

now dimmed some by the magisterium.

The time I’ve spent with asses was well spent

and taught me reticence, humility,

and reverence for their meditative lives;

whereas my time with hierarchs has wrought

little but wariness at the ways of men

who claim to have such eminence and grace

and proud dominion over lesser beings

for whom the heart keeps time: par rum pum pum pum.