Epiphany, abundant

It's been a wonderful new year: thankful notes and appeals to prayer, time to play chess and hike and read and rejoice. I've taken on a new contract to develop online literature for Philpot Education, the IB provider that called on me to present 'Teaching poetry for enjoyment and assessment' in Milan a month ago. After a pretty full week of attending to this venture, I wanted to keep up the 'poem-a-week' encouragement, and the faithful ravens (Jon remembers the Czech term 'havran') came to help me make the 150th poem on http://lostmenagerie.blogspot.cz/. Here's to Epiphany extending to our neighborhoods and beyond.

       'To the Least of These'

As if to punctuate the advent of the snow,

migrant ravens perch and pick apart the

remnant walnuts clinging in the breeze,

pelting down like hailstones—lo, a couple

months ago the drunks that wander up

and down our streets would gather these,

grinding nature into nutmeg and maybe

into eggnog, preparing as these ravens for

anything to antidote against the freeze,

mild as it’s become in schemes of global

things. The neighborhood seems numb to

entertain who’d reconnoiter walnut trees,

but coming home I could not abnegate the

clue of ravens clattering above me, carving

nutshells of survival with existential ease.