Taking Down the Tree

"Give me some light!" cries Hamlet's
uncle midway through the murder
of Gonzago. "Light! Light!" cry scattering
courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,
it's dark at four, and even the moon
shines with only half a heart.

The ornaments go down into the box:
the silver spaniel, My Darling
on its collar, from Mother's childhood
in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack
my brother and I fought over,
pulling limb from limb. Mother
drew it together again with thread
while I watched, feeling depraved
at the age of ten.

With something more than caution
I handle them, and the lights, with their
tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along
from house to house, their pasteboard
toy suitcases increasingly flimsy.
Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.

By suppertime all that remains is the scent
of balsam fir. If it's darkness
we're having, let it be extravagant.

-Jane Kenyon

Happy Christmas!

A Christmas Song

Christmas is coming. The goose is getting fat
---------------Please put a penny in the old man’s hat.
---------------If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do.
---------------If you haven’t got a ha’penny, Gold bless you.

Tonight the wide, wet flakes of snow
Drift down like Christmas suicides,
Layering the eaves and boughs until
The landscape seems transformed, as from
A night of talk or love. I’ve come
From cankered ports and railroad hubs
To winter in a northern state:
Three months of wind and little light.
Wood split, flue cleaned, and ashes hauled,
I am now proof against the cold
And make a place before the stove.
Mired fast in middle age, possessed
Of staved-in barn and brambled lot,
I think of that fierce-minded woman
Whom I loved, painting in a small,
Unheated room, or of a friend,
Sharp-ribbed from poverty, who framed
And fitted out his house by hand
And writes each night by kerosene.
I think, that is, of others who
Withdrew from commerce and the world
To work for joy instead of gain.
O would that I could gather them
This Yuletide, and shower them with coins.

-Norman Williams, 2003

As Real As Life

Say to the mild melancholy of regret
That seizes the Sunday afternoon,
I will not let your charm be sullied
By those tears that wet
The first ten years from June.
June was my birthday, likely from then
Until I can remember, Sunday was slow
Like a praying mantis climbing an oak
And tears, like tea, had formal cause to flow.
I will not regret the stereoptic world
Seen through Sunday windows
Baffled by depths that overlapped dismay.
But I will say, I have seen many a photograph
As real as life, and I have saved
A clipping about mountaineers who froze.

-Ruth Stone, 1955

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

-Wendell Berry, 1968

This is my last week in Saskatoon before I go home for winter break, which means I have the dubious pleasure of wrapping up a semester's worth of academics this week, with one exam, one poster presentation, and one thesis proposal. Not terrible, but vaguely intimidating.

This poem has long been a touchstone for me--I used to have the text of it in a virtual sticky note that I kept on my desktop at all times--but especially at times like this. I once read it repeatedly in preparation for a presentation instead of preparing for the presentation in any tangible way, and since then it's something I've come back to, time and again, when resting in the grace of the world would serve me better than clutching at the stones of my worries and turning them over and over in my mind.

And, on the topic of wild things, an update on the cranelings of yore: this photostream on flickr has several pictures of 'my' chicks. Any bird numbered 18 through 28-10 is one of ours.

It's the second Sunday of Advent, and Christmas is Happening, the musical advent calendar I linked last year, is happening again. 'Tis the season.