First Sunday of Advent

"Exile"

The faces of the old men
glow orange in the brazier's light,
seeing through time
with white milky cataract eyes.
The camels snort somewhere in the dark.
Huddled against the desert cold
they tell us the stories.
One Story, really.
A hope, now tenuous and dim,
rendered more fragile with the tellings,
like the glowing cinders rising
and taken by the wind
into the dark beyond seeing.
Of a king
who would come.
Of a God
who had not forgotten us.