To the New Year by W.S. Merwin

With what stillness at last

you appear in the valley

your first sunlight reaching down

to touch the tips of a few

high leaves that do not stir

as though they had not noticed

and did not know you at all

then the voice of a dove calls

from far away in itself

to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you

here and now whether or not

anyone hears it this is

where we have come with our age

our knowledge such as it is

and our hopes such as they are

invisible before us

untouched and still possible

The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate      When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter's dregs made desolate     The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky     Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh     Had sought their household fires. The land's sharp features seemed to be     The Century's corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy,     The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth     Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth     Seemed fervourless as I. At once a voice arose among     The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong     Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,     In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul     Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carolings     Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things     Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through     His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew     And I was unaware.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

I remember Christmas lights...

I remember Christmas lights! The ones that got hot and were unsafe before we knew they were. They were my favorite thing about the Christmas trees of my childhood. I could lose myself in the bright colorful lights, especially if I squinted and expanded the brightness in my field of sight. It was almost hypnotic. There were also the foil reflectors that accompanied some of the lights - not enough for all of them but for just a few that made those lights extra-special. Today there are more and more lights available to those wanting them - many pretty styles including the vintage shape and colors of the ones I recall; but today they remain cool and are no longer unsafe. But there was just something about those lights of the '50s and '60s!

Do not forget or nothing will ever change!

Pray for Newtown

Pray for Newtown, and pray for sanity to overcome the insanity of gun violence in this country. How many more have to die?

For a Hopeful Holliday Season!

May Sarton, December Moon

"Before going to bed
After a fall of snow
I look out on the field
Shining there in the moonlight
So calm, untouched and white
Snow silence fills my head
After I leave the window.

Hours later near dawn
When I look down again
The whole landscape has changed
The perfect surface gone
Criss-crossed and written on
where the wild creatures ranged
while the moon rose and shone.

why did my dog not bark?
Why did I hear no sound
There on the snow-locked ground
In the tumultuous dark?

How much can come, how much can go
When the December moon is bright,
What worlds of play we'll never know
Sleeping away the cold white night
After a fall of snow."  

Linda Pastan, The Letter

"It is December in the garden,
an early winter here, with snow
already hiding my worst offenses --
the places I disturbed your moss
with my heavy boots; the corner
where I planted in too deep a hole
the now stricken hawthorne: crystals
hanging from its icy branches
are the only flowers it will know.

When did solitude become
mere loneliness and the sounds
of birds at the feeder seem
not like a calibrated music
but the discordant dialects
of strangers simply flying through?
I have tried to construct a life
alone here -- coffee at dawn; a jog
through the chilling air

counting my heartbeats,
as if the doctor were my only muse;
books and bread and firewood --
those usual stepping-stones from month
to freezing month. but the constricted light,
the year closing down on itself with all
the vacancies of January ahead, leave me
unreconciled even to beauty.
When will you be coming back?"