Silent Night

The tense quiet was broken with the sound of:
“Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht, Alles schläft; einsam wacht.”
Huddled in frozen trenches a stone‟s throw apart, Scottish,
French and Germans strained to make sense of “Silent Night”
that Christmas Eve, 1914.
Clasping a Christmas tree, the man, much more at home in
the Berlin opera house, clamored up onto the field decorated
with the fallen he might soon be joining. Then one by one, leaving their weapons, enemies joined
the choir. French wine, Scottish beer and German chocolate
were swapped, sweetheart photos shared, prayers made
and war’s brutalities forgotten.