Four days past the winter solstice, when
the sunlight hours are at their shortest and
the drive home's darker than it's ever been,
it's good to know that Christ is born, again,
and if that's more than you can comprehend,
imagine those first Christmas moments when
the angels broke the shepherds' darkness and
declared the day and what it meant to them.
God meets us in our fields of fear and sin
and brings joy to the world we're living in
and gives us peace, such peace that even when
the nights seem endless we're assured again
of good news worth repeating now and then:
to us, this day, the son is born, again.
Merry Christmas from the Volds
A great connection between darkening days and coming into the light, what runners know intuitively as they'll run mornings and evenings, all seasons. I hope you share this with your church, too. It wouldn't be immodest to host a poets' corner in your newsletter.
ReplyDeleteI've written a couple poems in quick succession and was only half done with "to Speak is to Breathe" when I last posted on Stillwater. The link to "possibly Petrarch today" I edited to the now completed homage to Eric Garner, which is the poem I want more to cultivate, especially stanzas 4 and 5. The sonnet was for practice as I challenged students in my Lit class to compose over the holiday, and needed to follow my own advice. I was practicing a modernized sense of Petrarch, as I've generally tracked into Shakespearean sonnets in the past, and I wanted to try the octave/volta method. Here it is:
Every so often—well, not so
very often, as phenomena go—yet
generally told, miracles happen,
even to those who flirt with a faith;
never I’d measure such gain
in dividend windfall, tin accolades,
yesterday’s coo, skylines mauve
and far away. I’d rather tender you.
It’s Christmas again, Advent,
as leads to adventure—a term dear
dad liked to use—and so today,
or any day, let’s huddle the manger,
reflect such glow, fully know:
every so often God’s pipping occurs.