52nd & 8th

Dear Santa,

There is a puppy with a slice of pepperoni pizza lying under a crochet blanket on the streets of New York.

I watch people step over, or look away, as if their busy lives give them the right to. 

What do I have that gives me the right to walk on by? 

To be honest, nothing.

I am suddenly feeling more naughty than nice.

I stop, broken by the scene. The pup had no idea of how to eat that perfect piece of pizza laid carefully out before him. I wanted to run and buy dog food. I wanted to give him what he needed.

But then I heard a voice, soft inside my head…

“Look again.”

 So I looked…then I looked closer.

Santa, was it what he needed… or what I needed?

The pup was warm under a blanket with a friend.

What little they had they shared with each another.

In the failings of mankind, this was not one.

 I wish, Santa, for shelter and kindness to come their way. 

I wish for simple love under a crochet blanket shared on a cold winter’s eve to come mine.

I found myself standing, willing to trade my momentarily glossy, fake, trumped up life for a seat on that blanket with the two of them.

I want to be a friend like that.

Does it fit in a stocking?

It’s suddenly all I want for Christmas.

Santa, please stop at 52nd and 8th. Leave more love with them. Give them the stocking stuffers that might have come my way, I have some work to do. 

You cant miss them, a man and a dog under a crochet blanket, modeling the best of you.

Thank you though, for the moment to see the in-between. That space between breaths we are too busy to notice, much less acknowledge. 

Until next year Santa… I’ll take the coal, I’ll slow my roll and learn to let God live through me.

Maybe then, if Im lucky, very very lucky I will see you on the corner of 52nd and 8th…………… with a blanket and a friend.