Bright clear sky scythes sleep like diamond knife through velvet and soft snow swaddles granite ground kissing world to winter with every falling flake.
Dark descends before Day's done ushers Night untimely borne on whispering winds scuttling frozen through naked trees.
a swaddled presence,
womb-red lies.
Light-bedecked trees,
home-warm inside
hide
Light of the World
hung up to die
on the cast-out,
outside-the-city hillside.
Every so often, Abigail thinks that she should feel at least a little bit guilty.
(It's hard to be repentant when you're married to the king
and the husband who passed away to make it possible
was horrible.)
Still, it niggles
just a little.
She remembers,
(day time, a lingering glow of satisfaction,
night time 3 am, a blush of guilt,)
how, maddened by horrible husband's outrageous,
(and dangerous)
discourteous behaviour,
she nicked the week's supplies from his bleating pantry
and whisked them to David in the desert.
It was a thrill, (though scary.)
Still, when that oaf of a husband was blotto (again) on her return,
it eased any potential remorse.
He died of a hard heart a week later.
No, Abigail, it wasn't your fault.
Enjoy.
the dark would-be-day
folded like midnight around me,
curling into my thoughts like smoke.
I remember when
this time was day time,
and we sat in long-shadowed evenings,
sun-warmed and pensive,
gnat-gnawed, summer days stretched like elastic
to trespass on night’s turf.
Suddenly over stretched,
they snapped back to where winter waited,
stung the season’s hand,
frost biting the fast-fading skin.
Here I am again,
wrapped in season’s greetings,
holding out for spring.
Not sleeping but seething.
Swarms of rest-seekers
begging inn-keepers
for a bed.
Look where little Bethlehem lies.
No silent night.
Streets lined with Roman soldiers
and criminals on crosses,
hung as gasping warnings
to the passing throng.
Look where little Bethlehem lies,
between sheep on the hillsides
and star in the east.
Occupied territory
teeming with lost souls
far from home.
Look where in a manger lies
- hay scratching new-born flesh,
nuzzled by flea-ridden beasts,
the everlasting arms
bound by swaddling bands -
Hope of the nations,
Wonderful Counsellor
And Prince of Peace.
Whatever we do, we humans, we are all walking on ropes.
High ropes, pulled tight between left and right, wrong and right, ethics and human rights,
suspended on a knife edge on the edge of reason.
Complicated
knotted ropes,
struggling to find
beginnings
and ends.
Ropes
to
swing
from,
hang
from,
bind
ourselves
and
beat
ourselves.
Half way between Time and Eternity, we step out boldly,
Picking a path on personalised strands of this tangled web.
Was it bleak?
Possibly for Mary,
Weak and heavy-laden every labour-inducing step
to Bethlehem.
Not winter though –
not with Passover lambs on the hillside –
and definitely not white.
(In Palestine snow would have been yet one more
miracle that holy, but probably noisily-not-silent night.)
No snow.
Dusty streets and maybe some green hills for the sheep.
Could the beasts in the smelly stable know
their maker lay
mewling in the hay?
Doubtful. Even his mother was confused.
Who wasn’t? (The angels were at an advantage, being celestial.)
The shepherds believed, and did what they were told,
but did they wonder
ever after
what exactly had gone on?
Even we,
with two thousand years discussing history,
still spread the rumour
it was all about babies and the bleak mid winter,
ignoring what we know (about the baby growing up, beaten up and dying.)
There was no tinsel in the manger.
Just two tired refugees
huddled in the hay,
hoping the birth would be ok.
Whose idea was it,
to keep the king of Heaven in expensive buildings?
Perhaps whoever it was
forgot that he’s gone home to his throne
and left the poor and suffering
representing him here.
Strange, building ornamental houses inside his footstool,
when he’s made his home in people
who have no homes to put a footstool in.
They must be huge,
the hands that hold the world.
Hands that set planets spinning like gyroscopes,
and threw stars so hard
they stayed where they were put.
They must be strong hands,
to hang on nails,
and still support
the weight of humankind,
without dropping a single soul.
They must be huge, strong hands,
where the bruised reed of my life
lies like a baby,
curled into the nail marks,
Knowing it won’t be broken.
It is not that the
sun stopped shining,
that the earth grew dark and cold,
it is not that the
clouds moved nearer,
that the days shrank withered, old.
It is not that the
crown of darkness
was placed on Winter’s brow,
it is not that the sun’s stopped shining
in the frosty heavens now,
it is not that the earth is silent and lies as hard as stone,
but that I in my pale, cold prison,
am held here all alone.
In the darkness of all my loathing
my heart beats captive to flesh.
It is not that the nights grow darker
but that Dark is withholding Death.
It is not that the sunlight has vanished,
that the earth is cold and grey,
it is only myself captive, waiting
for Death to take me away.
But Death is held by the winter
as helpless and silent as I,
‘til my spirit returns to my body
and the sun shines again in the sky.
telepathic touch.
It is cold.
The rain that strikes the earth
like a thousand spears,
like the tears of an angry god,
is a frosted passion.
The once warm breeze
is wrapped around
with ice-bound love
that freezes with each kiss.
Flesh and blood resist the chill
until
the hungry bone is touched
and all is lost to Winter’s game.
It is cold and all is held
in the season’s silver clasp.
Winter, you are not dead nor old,
you are not the almanac’s diseased remains,
the corpse of calendar’s out of date days.
In your silent, frosted spirit dwells
the sum and crown of all the seasons’ joy
and pain.
Winter soft, your darkened days
are not shrunk youths grown old and grey and failing,
but cradled in your arms they sleep
and heal.
Yours hours, sequestered twilight, yield
to velvet shadows’ soft caress
and know the gentle passion of their touch.
You are not the shroud that
suffocates my hopes,
the icy flow that floods my passion’s fire.
You are not the frost that claims my heart,
the scythe that strikes the substance of desire.
I know you now,
Winter who I saw unseeing, cruel,
was my illusion,
my own fear of what I thought I knew.
Winter, still those fears that haunt me still.
All the seasons meet in you
to know their essence in your own.
Your place within the season’s restless,
turning tide is right
and true.
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