Category Archives: poetry

When they are quite dressed.

holidays, poetry, , ,

I no longer decorate a big cut tree in the house, with its spicy needles scenting the room. But I love this poem still; parts of it apply very nicely to a tree I bought this year (before the live conifer I mentioned a couple of days ago), a little tree for sure, only two feet high, and bare-branched. I will wait to show you either of my current trees, until I can decorate them with versions of spangles and rings.

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 spangles
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

P1030175
tree from the past

He paints in fairy lines.

nature, poetry, ,

JACK FROST

The door was shut, as doors should be,
Before you went to bed last night;
Yet Jack Frost has got in, you see,
And left your window silver white.

He must have waited till you slept;
And not a single word he spoke,
But penciled o’er the panes and crept
Away again before you woke.

And now you cannot see the hills
Nor fields that stretch beyond the lane;
But there are fairer things than these
His fingers traced on every pane.

Rocks and castles towering high;
Hills and dales, and streams and fields;
And knights in armor riding by,
With nodding plumes and shining shields.

And here are little boats, and there
Big ships with sails spread to the breeze;
And yonder, palm trees waving fair
On islands set in silver seas,

And butterflies with gauzy wings;
And herds of cows and flocks of sheep;
And fruit and flowers and all the things
You see when you are sound asleep.

For, creeping softly underneath
The door when all the lights are out,
Jack Frost takes every breath you breathe,
And knows the things you think about.

He paints them on the window-pane
In fairy lines with frozen steam;
And when you wake you see again
The lovely things you saw in dream.

~ Gabriel Setoun (1861-1930)

His mirror, sister, Bride.

Advent, poetry, , ,

Malcolm Guite has given us a rich treasury in the poetry anthology he assembled, Waiting on the Word: A Poem a Day for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany. For each poem he writes what he calls a “reflective essay,” and they are wonderfully enlightening for someone like me whose education in poetry is minimal.

I was browsing the paperback last night just before falling asleep, and when I read this poem by Christina Rossetti I got the idea to post it here on its eponymous day — but I lost that thought altogether with consciousness. Guite has put it on his blog on the proper day, where you can hear him read it if you like. But to read his thoughts you’ll have to get the book itself.

For the Orthodox, what we call the Nativity Fast does not begin on a certain day of the week approximately four weeks before the Feast of the Nativity of Christ, but always on November 15, making it 40 days long. It’s consistent, but wouldn’t make a tidy title for a poem!

ADVENT SUNDAY

BEHOLD, the Bridegroom cometh: go ye out
With lighted lamps and garlands round about
To meet Him in a rapture with a shout.

It may be at the midnight, black as pitch,
Earth shall cast up her poor, cast up her rich.

It may be at the crowing of the cock
Earth shall upheave her depth, uproot her rock.

For lo, the Bridegroom fetcheth home the Bride:
His Hands are Hands she knows, she knows His Side.

Like pure Rebekah at the appointed place,
Veiled, she unveils her face to meet His Face.

Like great Queen Esther in her triumphing,
She triumphs in the Presence of her King.

His Eyes are as a Dove’s, and she’s Dove-eyed;
He knows His lovely mirror, sister, Bride.

He speaks with Dove-voice of exceeding love,
And she with love-voice of an answering Dove.

Behold, the Bridegroom cometh: go we out
With lamps ablaze and garlands round about
To meet Him in a rapture with a shout.

-Christina Rossetti

The seed of heaven on my face.

family, poetry, , , , ,

Having a baby in the house gets to feel perfectly, comfortingly normal after a week. Babies always keep me focused on the fundamental things, like laughing and kissing and playing lap games with a little person just starting out in the world.

The way they give their full attention to their work, whether it is a game of throwing a cork and chasing it, or eating breakfast, is inspiring. Their thoughts are not always wandering to the other work waiting to be done, or Does Johnny like me? and other such distractions.

Raj and his parents have returned to the other side of the globe. Our last few days, which were quieter after all the fun aunts and uncles and cousins had gone, provided more opportunity for the two of us to wander about the garden between showers, to examine sunflower seeds and olives and salvia flowers; and for Raj to eat peanut butter for the first and second times.

We all went to the coast and listened to the waves crashing on the sand, and felt the fresh and rain-softened air. This morning of Kate and Tom and Raj’s departure, I came to consciousness with the sound of rain lending an unusual clarity — and when it’s heavy enough to hear, that means it’s enough to really soak in and bless the earth. It’s the best way I know to wake up.

I’ve been wanting to post this poem, and now seems right, even though it is a somewhat melancholy reflection. The seeds of heaven the poet feels are a comforting connection to those he is separated from, and a distillation of pain into something so nourishing, only God could have accomplished it.

AUTUMN RAIN

The plane leaves
fall black and wet
on the lawn;

the cloud sheaves
in heaven’s fields set
droop and are drawn

in falling seeds of rain;
the seed of heaven
on my face

falling — I hear again
like echoes even
that softly pace

heaven’s muffled floor,
the winds that tread
out all the grain

of tears, the store
harvested
in the sheaves of pain

caught up aloft:
the sheaves of dead
men that are slain

now winnowed soft
on the floor of heaven;
manna invisible

of all the pain
here to us given;
finely divisible
falling as rain.

-D.H. Lawrence

Read about the poem here.