The Stable

Hey kids, here's a Christmas poem that's been brewing for a while. It doesn't feel finished to me yet, especially the last half. So let me know what you think it needs -- as well as the usual whether it's intelligible and if there are lines that don't work. (For those who were at Scribblers last night, this is nearly the same thing I read.)

The Stable

The stable stands in floods of chill, dark air,
And it is like a hand that keeps a flame
From drowning in the wind that whines without.
And also, it is like that braying boat
That captain Noah, baffled, plies on silt
(And underneath the silt the hungry fish
Lurch through the broken doorways munching bones).
But in the boat – and in the stable too –
Breath waits to kindle out on the dank world.
And when, wing-tired, the tattered dove finds perch,
Then claws and hooves of squinting animals
Will tramp into the day outside the dark.
The stable, like the boat, will grind to ground
Against a hill and make an altar there,
And from an open door among the bones
The living scramble out and try their eyes.
But now the stable floats in lapping floods;
Its beams withstand the splashing of the night.

J. Benskin, 2008. (v.7)