Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering.
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.
So I have shut the doors of my house,
so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
so I am sitting in semi-dark
hunched over my desk
with nothing for a view
to tempt me
but a bloated compost heap,
steamy old stinkpile,
under my window;
and I pick my notebook up
and I start to read aloud
the still-wet words I scribbled
on the blotted page:
“Light splashed…”
I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.
‘The Round’
Stanley Kunitz
O God-With-Us may I not turn You away today, be so busy filling my day with so much joy of Who-I-think-You-Are, that I say unwittingly, again, there is no room for You-the-I-AM here in my life.
O God-Who-Comes, who came, who is coming into the dark corners of my life, the place where I haven’t yet made room for You, rebirth me gently, I pray. In the quiet echoes of my disquiet, rebirth me gently I pray. In the rough places, the stinking compost piles of my waste, rebirth me gently I pray.
O God-With-Us, rebirth me so I may encounter You this day.
Some-how, some-where, O God-Who-Is, be born in me today.
Christmas declares the glory of the flesh:
And therefore a European might wish
To celebrate it not at midwinter but in spring, when physical life is strong,
When the consent to live is forced even on the young,
Juice is in the soil, the leaf, the vein,
Sugar flows to movement in limbs and brain.
Also before a birth, nourishing the child
We turn again to the earth
With unusual longing – to what is rich, wild,
Substantial: scents that have been stored and strengthened
In apple lofts, the underwash of woods, and in barns;
Drawn through the lengthened root; pungent cones
(While the fir wood stands waiting; the beech wood aspiring,
each in a different silence), and breaking out in spring
with scent sight sound indivisible in song.
Yet if you think again
It is good that Christmas comes at the dark dream of the year
That might wish to sleep ever.
For birth is awaking, birth is effort and pain;
And now at midwinter are hints, inklings
(Sodden primrose, honeysuckle greening)
That sleep must be broken.
To bear new life or learn to live is an exacting joy:
The whole self must waken; you cannot predict the way
It will happen, or master the responses beforehand.
For any birth makes an inconvenient demand;
Like all holy things
It is frequently a nuisance, and its needs never end;
Freedom it brings: we should welcome release
From its long merciless rehearsal of peace.
So Christ comes,
At the iron senseless time, comes
To force the glory into frozen veins:
His warmth makes
Green life glazed in the pool, wakes
All calm and crystal trance with the living pains.
And each year
In seasonal growth is good – year
That lacking love is a stale story at best
By God’s birth
Our common birth is holy; birth
Is all at Christmas time and wholly blest.
‘Christmas and the Common Birth’
Anne Ridler
green life glazed wakes. (iPhone image)
image into ikon 