Advent

The Advent moon shines bright and clear;
These Advent nights are very long;
Our lamps have burned year after year,
And still their flame is strong.

‘Watchman, what of the night?’ we cry,
Heartsick with hope deferred:
‘No speaking signs are in the sky’,
Is still the watchman’s word.

One to another hear them speak,
The patient virgins wise:
Surely He is not far to seek,
All night we watch and rise.

The days are evil looking back,
The coming days are dim,
Yet count we not His promise slack,
But watch and wait for Him.

Weeping we hold him fast tonight,
We will not let Him go
Till daybreak smite our wearied sight,
And summer smite the snow:

Then figs shall bud, and dove with dove
Shall coo the livelong day;
Then He shall say ‘Arise, my love,
My fair one, come away!’

The Advent moon shines cold and clear.
We watch and wait.

--Christina Rosetti (1830-1894), English romantic poet , devout Anglican, and advocate of the Oxford movement

Early Frost

This morning the world’s white face reminds us
that life intends to become serious again.
And the same loud birds that all summer long
annoyed us with their high attitudes and chatter
silently line the gibbet of the fence a little stunned,
chastened enough.

They look as if they’re waiting for things
to grow worse, but are watching the house,
as if somewhere in their dim memories
they recall something about this abandoned garden
that could save them.

The neighbor’s dog has also learned to wake
without exaggeration. And the neighbor himself
has made it to his car with less noise, starting
the small engine with a kind of reverence. At the window
his wife witnesses this bleak tableau, blinking
her eyes, silent.

I fill the feeders to the top and cart them
to the tree, hurrying back inside
to leave the morning to these ridiculous
birds, who, reminded, find the rough shelters,
bow, and then feed.

--Scott Cairns (1954- ) English professor at Mizzou and Orthodox Christian

Winter Trees

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

--William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), American physician and poet of the Imagist school

Resurrection

Long, long, long ago;
Way before this winter’s snow
First fell upon these weathered fields;
I used to sit and watch and feel
And dream of how the spring would be,
When through the winter’s stormy sea
She’d raise her green and growing head,
Her warmth would resurrect the dead.

Long before this winter’s snow
I dreamt of this day’s sunny glow
And thought somehow my pain would pass
With winter’s pain, and peace like grass
Would simply grow. (But) The pain’s not gone.
It’s still as cold and hard and long
As lonely pain has ever been,
It cuts so deep and fear within.

Long before this winter’s snow
I ran from pain, looked high and low
For some fast way to get around
Its hurt and cold. I’d have found,
If I had looked at what was there,
That things don’t follow fast or fair.
That life goes on, and times do change,
And grass does grow despite life’s pains.

Long before this winter’s snow
I thought that this day’s sunny glow,
The smiling children and growing things
And flowers bright were brought by spring.
Now, I know the sun does shine,
That children smile, and from the dark, cold, grime
A flower comes. It groans, yet sings,
And through its pain, its peace begins.

--Mary Ann Bernard, from Rueben Job and Norman Shawchuck, eds., A Guide To Prayer (Nashville: The Upper Room), p. 144.

A Terrible Beauty

                             April is the cruelest month…
                             -- T. S. ELIOT

If you happen to miss this year’s
Cruelest Month Competition,
it began with all twelve contestants
taking the stage together
in the order of the calendar year,
each dressed in outfits
that saying of their personalities—
March windblown and wet with rain,
October resplendent in red and orange.

Many wondered why April, a perennial loser,
would even bother to show up,
always smiling, daffodils
embroidered on her bodice.
Some blamed it on a poem she'd read somewhere.

Others followed her early elimination—
August with zinc slathered on her nose,
December looking like the Mother of God.
It must be said that no one was surprised
when the tuxedoed man with a microphone
finally announced this year's winner,
the same as every year since its beginning.

Even though she'd shivered
during the swimsuit part
and stumbled when asked
how she planned to change the world,
February was the obvious choice.
I mean the Super Bowl's over by then
and spring's a mile away.
What could be crueler? As one guy put it.
And that was about it, except for the coronation.

There she stood, the only month on the stage,
crying a few chilly tears,
a thin smile frozen on her lips.
Then she bent her knees a little
So as to be less tall,
and some official placed on her head
her latest dripping, silvery crown of ice.

-- Billy Collins (1941- ), American poet, former poet laureate of the US, and teacher

Sestina

I have come, alas, to the great circle of shadow,
to the short day and to the whitening hills,
when the colour is all lost from the grass,
though my desire will not lose its green,
so rooted is it in this hardest stone,
that speaks and feels as though it were a woman.

And likewise this heaven-born woman
stays frozen, like the snow in shadow,
and is unmoved, or moved like a stone,
by the sweet season that warms all the hills,
and makes them alter from pure white to green,
so as to clothe them with the flowers and grass.

When her head wears a crown of grass
she draws the mind from any other woman,
because she blends her gold hair with the green
so well that Amor lingers in their shadow,
he who fastens me in these low hills,
more certainly than lime fastens stone.

Her beauty has more virtue than rare stone.
The wound she gives cannot be healed with grass,
since I have travelled, through the plains and hills,
to find my release from such a woman,
yet from her light had never a shadow
thrown on me, by hill, wall, or leaves' green.

I have seen her walk all dressed in green,
so formed she would have sparked love in a stone,
that love I bear for her very shadow,
so that I wished her, in those fields of grass,
as much in love as ever yet was woman,
closed around by all the highest hills.

The rivers will flow upwards to the hills
before this wood, that is so soft and green,
takes fire, as might ever lovely woman,
for me, who would choose to sleep on stone,
all my life, and go eating grass,
only to gaze at where her clothes cast shadow.

Whenever the hills cast blackest shadow,
with her sweet green, the lovely woman
hides it, as a man hides stone in grass.

--Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), Italian poet, writer, and philosopher, one of the greatest poets who ever lived

Choices

I go to the mountain side
of the house to cut saplings,
and clear a view to snow
on the mountain. But when I look up,
saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in
the uppermost branches.
I don’t cut that one.
I don’t cut the others either.
Suddenly, in every tree,
an unseen nest
where a mountain
would be.

--Tess Gallagher (1943- ) American poet, teacher, and translator, widow of Raymond Carver

Lines for Winter

for Ros Krauss

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

--Mark Strand (1934-2014), Canadian-American poet, editor, translator, and writer

In Winter

At four o’clock it’s dark.
Today, looking out through dusk
at three gray women in stretch slacks
chatting in front of the post office,
their steps left and right and back
like some quick folk dance of kindness,
I remembered the winter we spent
crying in each other’s laps.
What could you be thinking at this moment?
How lovely and strange the gangly spines
of trees against a thickening sky
as you drive from the library
humming off-key? Or are you smiling
at an idea met in a book
the way you smiled with your whole body
the first night we talked?
I was so sure my love of you was perfect,
and the light today
reminded me of the winter you drove home
each day in the dark at four o’clock
and would come into my study to kiss me
despite mistake after mistake after mistake.

--Michael Ryan (1946- ), St. Louis-born American poet,  from New and Selected Poems.

Sonnet CXVII-- How like a winter hath my absence been

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) greatest English dramatist, poet, and actor

Winter Trees

All the complicated details

of the attiring 

and the disattiring are completed! 

A liquid moon 

moves gently among 

the long branches. 

Thus having prepared their buds 

against a sure winter 

the wise trees 

stand sleeping in the cold.

--William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) American physican and poet

The Snow Storm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky, 
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, 
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air 
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven, 
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end. 
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet 
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit 
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
In a tumultuous privacy of storm. 

    Come see the north wind's masonry. 
Out of an unseen quarry evermore 
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer 
Curves his white bastions with projected roof 
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door. 
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work 
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he 
For number or proportion. Mockingly, 
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths; 
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn; 
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall, 
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and, at the gate, 
A tapering turret overtops the work. 
And when his hours are numbered, and the world 
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not, 
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art 
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone, 
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work, 
The frolic architecture of the snow.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American Transcendentalist essayist, philosopher, and poet 

Lines for Winter

   for Ros Krauss 

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself—
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon's gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

--Mark Strand (1934-2014) Canadian-American poet and US poet laureate 1990-1991

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

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

(don't be bewildered)

don't be bewildered

by the cold weather!

dragonfly

--Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828), Japanese poet and haiku master, written 1811, translated by David G. Lanoue

.うろたへな寒くなるとて赤蜻蛉
urotae na samuku naru tote aka tombo

Praise Song for a Bright Winter's Day

As morning light gilds the heavens,
drawing an azure veil over the dancing stars,
we praise you, O God.

As noonday sun makes shadows disappear,
we think of your steadfast love beside us,
through whatever may come,
and we praise you, O God.

Though winter chill abides with us still,
we hear the whispered promise of spring
as the dry branches murmur their secret
of abundant green life rising, surging,
deep within their veins,
and we wonder in awe of your mysteries,
O Lord of Creation.

As evening sets the sky alight,
catching fire to the wingtips of darting sparrows
whose trills of joy stir an echo of hope
even within the winter heart,
we remember your tender care, O Holy One,
your watchful eye on the smallest creature,
and we praise your steadfast lovingkindness.

Even as the shoulder of Earth
turns toward night with a sigh,
like a sleeper settling deeper into dreams,
so we too rest secure, Blessed Savior,
within the bounds of your mercy,
and ask for your healing hand
to rest upon the brow of all for whom we pray
by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

--LKS, February 8, 2019

Pray to What Earth

Pray to what earth does this sweet cold belong, 
Which asks no duties and no conscience? 
The moon goes up by leaps, her cheerful path 
In some far summer stratum of the sky, 
While stars with their cold shine bedot her way. 
The fields gleam mildly back upon the sky, 
And far and near upon the leafless shrubs 
The snow dust still emits a silver light. 
Under the hedge, where drift banks are their screen, 
The titmice now pursue their downy dreams, 
As often in the sweltering summer nights 
The bee doth drop asleep in the flower cup, 
When evening overtakes him with his load. 
By the brooksides, in the still, genial night, 
The more adventurous wanderer may hear 
The crystals shoot and form, and winter slow 
Increase his rule by gentlest summer means. 

--Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American Transcendentalist thinker, author, essayist, and poet

Beyond the Red River

The birds have flown their summer skies to the south,
And the flower-money is drying in the banks of bent grass
Which the bumble bee has abandoned. We wait for a winter lion,
Body of ice-crystals and sombrero of dead leaves.

A month ago, from the salt engines of the sea,
A machinery of early storms rolled toward the holiday houses
Where summer still dozed in the pool-side chairs, sipping
An aging whiskey of distances and departures.

Now the long freight of autumn goes smoking out of the land.
My possibles are all packed up, but still I do not leave.
I am happy enough here, where Dakota drifts wild in the universe,
Where the prairie is starting to shake in the surf of the winter dark.

-- Thomas McGrath (1916-1990), North Dakotan poet and writer, and blacklisted target of McCarthyism, from Selected Poems 1938-1988.