(Little Drummer Boy)

And so it came to pass in those day
that the animals were musical.

Their cloven hooves, caked hard in mud and waste,
could thump a hollow sound at a steady pace
on the barn floor, muted in straw.

They never rushed, never dragged
against the steady progress of their beat,
which was music to the heavens.

It was only human
that the animals’ minders and tenders
— shepherds, stable boys —

thought they themselves played the principle instruments,
whether pipes in the field, or the drum of a child
in a song taken to be true.

For the humans in those times, as now,
saw themselves at the celestial center,
a kingdom that rules the kingdom of beasts.
Wise men with gifts, angels on harps and strings
may or may not have been present in the scene
depending on your level of belief.

But the lambs and the oxen? They are unquestionable,
beyond symbol, beyond faith.
It was a barn; we know they were there,

keeping time steady, inalterable,
out of reach of human hands
that shaped and misshaped the very planet

to which all children are born, holy or not,
on that night, or any other.

The carols are wrong. It is the flocks
that kept watch by night,
who by instinct maybe felt a pulse we cannot feel,

and by their presence tell us
we are not the masters.

Richard Terrill is a former student and instructor at UW-Eau Claire. He is the winner of the Minnesota Book Award for Poetry and the Associated Writing Programs Award for nonfiction. “The Ox and Lamb Kept Time” first appeared in the collection What Falls Away Is Always: Poems and Conversations. For more by Richard, search for his name at volumeone.org or visit richardterrill.com.