Burning the Old Year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds. 
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

--Naomi Shihab Nye (1952- ), Palestinian-American St.  Louis-born poet, from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems, 1995.

[little tree]

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look the spangle
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see 
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands 
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing 
"Noel Noel"

--e. e. cummings (1894-1963), American poet

Christmas at Sea

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seamen scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race roared;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close aboard:
So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running high,
And the coastguard in his garden, with his glass against his eye.

The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam;
The good red fires were burning bright in every 'long-shore home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out;
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.

The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial cheer;
For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the year)
This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn,
And the house above the coastguard's was the house where I was born.

O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the shelves.

And well I knew the talk they had, the talk that was of me,
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to sea;
And O the wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way,
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas Day.

They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
"All hands to loose topgallant sails," I heard the captain call.
"By the Lord, she'll never stand it," our first mate Jackson, cried. 
..."It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson," he replied.

She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood.
As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.

And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.

--Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), American novelist and poet 

The Mystic's Christmas

"All hail!" the bells of Christmas rang,
"All hail!" the monks at Christmas sang,
The merry monks who kept with cheer
The gladdest day of all their year.

But still apart, unmoved thereat,
A pious elder brother sat
Silent, in his accustomed place,
With God's sweet peace upon his face.

"Why sitt'st thou thus?" his brethren cried,
"It is the blessed Christmas-tide;
The Christmas lights are all aglow,
The sacred lilies bud and blow."

Above our heads the joy-bells ring,
Without the happy children sing,
And all God's creatures hail the morn
On which the holy Christ was born.

"Rejoice with us; no more rebuke
Our gladness with thy quiet look."
The gray monk answered, "Keep, I pray,
Even as ye list, the Lord's birthday. "

Let heathen Yule fires flicker red
Where thronged refectory feasts are spread;
With mystery-play and masque and mime
And wait-songs speed the holy time!

"The blindest faith may haply save; 
The Lord accepts the things we have; 
And reverence, howsoe'er it strays, 
May find at last the shining ways. 

"They needs must grope who cannot see, 
The blade before the ear must be; 
As ye are feeling I have felt, 
And where ye dwell I too have dwelt.

"But now, beyond the things of sense, 
Beyond occasions and events, 
I know, through God's exceeding grace, 
Release from form and time and space. 

"I listen, from no mortal tongue, 
To hear the song the angels sung; 
And wait within myself to know 
The Christmas lilies bud and blow. 

"The outward symbols disappear 
From him whose inward sight is clear; 
And small must be the choice of days 
To him who fills them all with praise! 

"Keep while you need it, brothers mine,
With honest seal your Christmas sign,
But judge not him who every morn
Feels in his heart the Lord Christ born!"

--John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), American poet

Christmas Away from Home

Her sickness brought me to Connecticut.
Mornings I walk the dog: that part of life
is intact. Who's painted, who's insulated
or put siding on, who's burned the lawn
with lime—that's the news on Ardmore Street.

The leaves of the neighbor's respectable
rhododendrons curl under in the cold.
He has backed the car
through the white nimbus of its exhaust
and disappeared for the day.

In the hiatus between mayors
the city has left leaves in the gutters,
and passing cars lift them in maelstroms.

We pass the house two doors down, the one
with the wildest lights in the neighborhood,
an establishment without irony.
All summer their putto empties a water jar,
their St. Francis feeds the birds.
Now it's angels, festoons, waist-high
candles, and swans pulling sleighs.

Two hundred miles north I'd let the dog
run among birches and the black shade of pines.
I miss the hills, the woods and stony
streams, where the swish of jacket sleeves
against my sides seems loud, and a crow
caws sleepily at dawn.

By now the streams must run under a skin
of ice, white air-bubbles passing erratically,
like blood cells through a vein. Soon the mail,
forwarded, will begin to reach me here.

--Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), American poet and translator, from Collected Poems (2005)

A Hymn for Christmas Day

The Shepherds watch their flocks by night,
Beneath the moon's unclouded light,
All around is calm and still,
Save the murm'ring of the rill:
When lo! a form of light appears,
And on the awe-struck Shepherds' ears
Are words, of peace and comfort flowing
From lips with love celestial glowing.
Spiritual forms are breaking
Through the gloom, their voices taking
Part in the adoring song
Of the bright angelic throng.
Wondering the Shepherds bend
Their steps to Bethlehem, and wend
To a poor and crowded inn:--
Tremblingly their way they win
To the stable, where they find
The Redeemer of mankind,
Just born into this world of danger,
Lying in an humble manger.
And they spread abroad each word
Which that joyful night they'd heard,
And they glorified the name
Of their gracious God, Who came
Himself to save from endless woe
The offspring of this world below.

--Christina Rosetti (1830-1894), English Romantic poet and devout Anglican.  

The Parting Glass

Oh all the money that e'er I spent
I spent it in good company
And all the harm that e'er I've done
Alas, it was to none but me
And all I've done for want of wit
To memory now I can't recall
So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be with you all

Oh all the comrades that e'er I've had
Are sorry for my going away
And all the sweethearts that e'er I've had
Would wish me one more day to stay
But since it falls unto my lot
That I should rise and you should not
I'll gently rise and I'll softly call
Good night and joy be with you all
Good night and joy be with you all.

--Traditional song, sung at the wake of Jody Naifeh on December 21, 2019.

Great Spirit Prayer

Oh, Great Spirit, 
Whose voice I hear in the winds 
and whose breath gives life to all the world. 
Hear me! I need your strength and wisdom. 
Let me walk in beauty, and make my eyes 
ever hold the red and purple sunset. 
Make my hands respect the things you have made 
and my ears sharp to hear your voice. 
Make me wise so that I may understand 
the things you have taught my people. 
Let me learn the lessons you have hidden 
in every leaf and rock. 

Help me remain calm and strong in the 
face of all that comes towards me. 
Help me find compassion without 
empathy overwhelming me. 
I seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, 
but to fight my greatest enemy: myself. 
Make me always ready to come to you 
with clean hands and straight eyes. 
So when life fades, as the fading sunset, 
my spirit may come to you without shame. 

- Lakota, translated by Lakota Sioux Chief Yellow Lark in 1887

Sonnet 97

How like a winter hath my absence been 
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! 
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! 
What old December's bareness everywhere! 
And yet this time remov'd was summer's time, 
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, 
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime, 
Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease: 
Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me 
But hope of orphans and unfather'd fruit; 
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee, 
And thou away, the very birds are mute; 
Or if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer 
That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.

--William Shakespeare, (1564-1616), English actor, playwright, and poet

White-Eyes

In winter 
   all the singing 
      is in the tops of the trees 
         where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
   shoves and pushes 
      among the branches.
         Like any of us 

he wants to go to sleep,
   but he's restless—
      he has an idea,
         and slowly it unfolds 

from under his beating wings
   as long as he stays awake.
      But his big, round music, after all,
         is too breathy to last.

So, it's over.
   In the pine-crown
      he makes his nest,
         he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird,
   I only imagine his glittering beak
      tucked in a white wing
         while the clouds—

which he has summoned
   from the north— 
     which he has taught
         to be mild, and silent— 

thicken, and begin to fall
   into the world below
      like stars, or the feathers
         of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
   that is asleep now, and silent— 
      that has turned itself
         into snow.

--Mary Oliver (1935-2019), American poet, teacher, and writer

Geodes

You can't always tell one from another 
And it's best not to judge a book by its tattered cover 
I have found when I tried or looked deeper inside 
What appears unadorned might be wondrously formed 
You can't always tell but sometimes you just know 

'Round here we throw geodes in our gardens 
They're as common as the rain or corn silk in July 
Unpretentious browns and grays the stain of Indiana clay, 
They're what's left of shallow seas glacial rock and mystery, 
And inside their shines a crystal bright as promise 

All these things that we call familiar, 
Are just miracles clothed in the commonplace 
You'll see it if you try in the next stranger's eyes, 
God walks around in muddy boots, 
sometimes rags and that's the truth, 
You can't always tell, but sometimes you just know 

Some say geodes are made from pockets of tears, 
Trapped away in small places for years upon years 
Pressed down and transformed, 'til the true self was born, 
And the whole world moved on like the last notes of a song, 
A love letter sent without return address 

You can't always tell one from another 
And it's best not to judge a book by it's tattered cover 
Now I don't open them to see folks 'round here just like me, 
We have come to believe there's hidden good in common things 
You can't always tell but sometimes you just know 
You can't always tell but sometimes you just know 

 --Carrie Newcomer (1958- ), American folk singer-songwriter


 

Snow Day

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow, 
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

In a while, I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch
sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news

that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed. 
the All Aboard Children’s School, closed, 
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed, 
along with—some will be delighted to hear—

the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and—clap your hands—the Peanuts Play School. 

So this is where the children hide all day, 
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets, 
 all darting and climbing and sliding, 
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.

And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.

-- Billy Collins (1941- ), American poet and US poet laureate 2001-2003, from Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems, 2001

Ojibway Prayer

Grandfather,

Sacred One,

teach us love, compassion, and honor

that we may heal the earth

and heal each other.

--Ojibway Prayer

Blue Christmas prayer

 
Around us, O God, the singing can be heard: ‘Joy to the world…let heaven and nature sing.’ This season is to be one of hope eases our minds, when peace soothes our hearts, when love warms our souls, and when joy comes each morning.

But there are many who do not feel this joy. Some might try, others have given up trying. ‘Where is this joy for us?’ they ask. The world has found joy but some feel as if it has passed them by. Our minds are not at ease…we feel too much doubt. Our hearts are not at peace…there is too much to do. Our souls are not warmed…the chill of death is too troubling. Where, O God, can joy be found? We ask this as we come before you in prayer, opening ourselves to the possibility that hope, peace, joy, and love might still come to us.

We pray for the lonely, that they might find comfort in another’s touch.

We pray for the downtrodden, that they might find relief from their burdens.

We pray for those wrestling with depression, that a light of calm might bring them peace.

We pray for those dealing with stress, that they might find the courage to let go. 

We pray for the grief-stricken, that they might experience the newness of life that you bring.

May joy come to the world, O God, and may we grasp some of that. We do not pray for joy that is temporary or fleeting, but a joy that runs deep and sustains us even in moments of despair. We seek this joy in a season that can be less than joyful. O God, hear our prayer.

We wait for Emanuel, God With Us, to come into our hearts once again. May we experience your love in new ways as we in turn love each other. We pray this in the name of the One who is to come. Amen.

-- Jeffrey A. Nelson, aka coffeepastor, blogger and UCC pastor, posted on Philosophy Over Coffee. http://philosophyovercoffee.blogspot.ca/2005/12/blue-christmas-prayer.html

Trappists, Working

Now all our saws sing holy sonnets in this world of timber 
Where oaks go off like guns, and fall like cataracts, 
Pouring their roar into the wood’s green well. 

Walk to us, Jesus, through the wall of trees, 
And find us still adorers in these airy churches, 
Singing our other Office with our saws and axes. 
Still teach Your children in the busy forest, 
And let some little sunlight reach us, in our mental shades, 
   and leafy studies.
When time has turned the country white with grain 
And filled our regions with the thrashing sun, 

Walk to us, Jesus, through the walls of wheat 
When our two tractors come to cut them down: 
Sow some light winds upon the acres of our spirit, 
And cool the regions where our prayers are reapers, 
And slake us, Heaven, with Your living rivers.
                                                                            (1946)

--Thomas Merton (1915-1968) OCSO, American Trappist monk, priest, essayist, memoirist, and poet, from In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems, 2005. His feast day is today.

Ribblesdale

Earth, sweet Earth, sweet landscape, with leavés throng
And louchéd low grass, heaven that dost appeal
To, with no tongue to plead, no heart to feel;
That canst but only be, but dost that long—

Thou canst but be, but that thou well dost; strong
Thy plea with him who dealt, nay does now deal,
Thy lovely dale down thus and thus bids reel
Thy river, and o’er gives all to rack or wrong.

  And what is Earth’s eye, tongue, or heart else, where
Else, but in dear and dogged man?—Ah, the heir
To his own selfbent so bound, so tied to his turn, 
To thriftless reave both our rich round world bare
And none reck of world after, this bids wear
Earth brows of such care, care and dear concern.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ (1844-1889), English Jesuit priest and poet

Forest Sonnet, Whidbey Island

"Now, no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
No mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for."

--from Spring and Fall, by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Here Sorrow springs and newborn Spring sorrows;
Their grief resolves in fiddleheads tomorrow.
The mournful poet sees the greening leaf
and vaults ahead to autumn's parting grief....

An anticipatory grief, so-called.
Here last year's leaves lie trodden, branch scraped-bald
From winter's remnant grip. But see, as Spring
Flushes first rosy throat, as thrushes sing

God's glory! Still, larks chirruping, skimming
The winds arise from southern vales, brimming
Their blessings upon the restive, waking Earth.
The forest floor will testify that birth

Sings from subsidence, converting death
God's gravid Spirit-- resurrection's breath.

--L. K. S., written after forest bathing while reading Hopkins, December 6, 2019

Spring and Fall

to a young child

MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! As the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now, no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.
No mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ, English Jesuit priest and poet

My God, It's Full of Stars

          1. 

We like to think of it as parallel to what we know, 
Only bigger. One man against the authorities. 
Or one man against a city of zombies. One man 

Who is not, in fact, a man, sent to understand 
The caravan of men now chasing him like red ants 
Let loose down the pants of America. Man on the run.

Man with a ship to catch, a payload to drop, 
This message going out to all of space. . . . Though 
Maybe it’s more like life below the sea: silent, 

Buoyant, bizarrely benign. Relics 
Of an outmoded design. Some like to imagine 
A cosmic mother watching through a spray of stars, 

Mouthing yes, yes as we toddle toward the light, 
Biting her lip if we teeter at some ledge. Longing 
To sweep us to her breast, she hopes for the best 

While the father storms through adjacent rooms 
Ranting with the force of Kingdom Come, 
Not caring anymore what might snap us in its jaw. 

Sometimes, what I see is a library in a rural community. 
All the tall shelves in the big open room. And the pencils 
In a cup at Circulation, gnawed on by the entire population. 

The books have lived here all along, belonging 
For weeks at a time to one or another in the brief sequence 
Of family names, speaking (at night mostly) to a face,

A pair of eyes. The most remarkable lies. 


           2. 

Charlton Heston is waiting to be let in. He asked once politely. 
A second time with force from the diaphragm. The third time, 
He did it like Moses: arms raised high, face an apocryphal white. 

Shirt crisp, suit trim, he stoops a little coming in, 
Then grows tall. He scans the room. He stands until I gesture, 
Then he sits. Birds commence their evening chatter. Someone fires 

Charcoals out below. He’ll take a whiskey if I have it. Water if I don’t. 
I ask him to start from the beginning, but he goes only halfway back. 
That was the future once, he says. Before the world went upside down. 

Hero, survivor, God’s right hand man, I know he sees the blank
Surface of the moon where I see a language built from brick and bone.
He sits straight in his seat, takes a long, slow high-thespian breath,

Then lets it go. For all I know, I was the last true man on this earth. And: 
May I smoke? The voices outside soften. Planes jet past heading off or back.
Someone cries that she does not want to go to bed. Footsteps overhead.

A fountain in the neighbor’s yard babbles to itself, and the night air 
Lifts the sound indoors. It was another time, he says, picking up again. 
We were pioneers. Will you fight to stay alive here, riding the earth

Toward God-knows-where? I think of Atlantis buried under ice, gone
One day from sight, the shore from which it rose now glacial and stark.
Our eyes adjust to the dark. 


          3.

Perhaps the great error is believing we’re alone,

That the others have come and gone—a momentary blip—

When all along, space might be choc-full of traffic,

Bursting at the seams with energy we neither feel

Nor see, flush against us, living, dying, deciding,

Setting solid feet down on planets everywhere,

Bowing to the great stars that command, pitching stones 

At whatever are their moons. They live wondering 

If they are the only ones, knowing only the wish to know,

And the great black distance they—we—flicker in.


Maybe the dead know, their eyes widening at last, 

Seeing the high beams of a million galaxies flick on 

At twilight. Hearing the engines flare, the horns

Not letting up, the frenzy of being. I want to be

One notch below bedlam, like a radio without a dial. 

Wide open, so everything floods in at once.

And sealed tight, so nothing escapes. Not even time,

Which should curl in on itself and loop around like smoke.

So that I might be sitting now beside my father

As he raises a lit match to the bowl of his pipe

For the first time in the winter of 1959. 





          4.

In those last scenes of Kubrick’s 2001 
When Dave is whisked into the center of space, 
Which unfurls in an aurora of orgasmic light 
Before opening wide, like a jungle orchid 
For a love-struck bee, then goes liquid, 
Paint-in-water, and then gauze wafting out and off, 
Before, finally, the night tide, luminescent 
And vague, swirls in, and on and on. . . . 

In those last scenes, as he floats
Above Jupiter’s vast canyons and seas,
Over the lava strewn plains and mountains
Packed in ice, that whole time, he doesn’t blink. 
In his little ship, blind to what he rides, whisked 
Across the wide-screen of unparcelled time, 
Who knows what blazes through his mind? 
Is it still his life he moves through, or does 
That end at the end of what he can name?

On set, it’s shot after shot till Kubrick is happy, 
Then the costumes go back on their racks 
And the great gleaming set goes black.


          5.
When my father worked on the Hubble Telescope, he said 
They operated like surgeons: scrubbed and sheathed
In papery green, the room a clean cold, a bright white.

He’d read Larry Niven at home, and drink scotch on the rocks,
His eyes exhausted and pink. These were the Reagan years,
When we lived with our finger on The Button and struggled

To view our enemies as children. My father spent whole seasons
Bowing before the oracle-eye, hungry for what it would find.
His face lit-up whenever anyone asked, and his arms would rise

As if he were weightless, perfectly at ease in the never-ending
Night of space. On the ground, we tied postcards to balloons
For peace. Prince Charles married Lady Di. Rock Hudson died.

We learned new words for things. The decade changed.

The first few pictures came back blurred, and I felt ashamed
For all the cheerful engineers, my father and his tribe.
The second time, The optics jibed. We saw to the edge of all there is— 

So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.

--Tracy K. Smith (1972- ), US poet laureate 2017-2019, from Life on Mars, 2011