Advent Poem Tree

Description

Here are all the poems:

December 1

Praise in December

By Rennie McQuilkin

Speak ye well of the meadow mice

wee things to have weathered

the freeze

with breath enough to spare

to leave a rime like stars

above each burrow in the field.

Bring gifts, bow down, and learn.

 

December 2

The Offering

By Laura Foley

These woods

on the edges of a lake

are settling now

to winter darkness.

Whatever was going to die

is gone –

crickets, ferns, swamp grass.

Bare earth fills long spaces of a field.

But look:

a single oak leaf

brown and shining

like a leather purse.

See what it so delicately offers

lying upturned on the path.

See how it reflects in its opened palm

a cup of deep, unending sky.

 

December 3

Celebration

By Rennie McQuilkin

A dozen apples in December

shrink and wrinkle, go from dark

to darker, hang by threads

no thicker than our own.

And yet how like to ornaments

a dozen apples in December

and how the sparrows, reeling,

assail on the earth-gold wine

a dozen apples, aging, brew

beneath a low and southern sun.

 

December 4

Winter Morning Magician

By Anne Harding Woodworth

9:45 a.m. somewhere

in a city, and I’m in a lobby

getting my mail,

when a man appears

out of an elevator,

his tuxedo a crisp black

with black studs

among the pleats

of a white shirt.

“How fine you look,”

I say to him,

“for a winter solstice morning.”

He holds up a box.

“Going to do

a magic show

at my kid’s school,” he says,

and then—just like that—

he disappears.

 

December 5

White

By Keith Walker

colorless white field—

stationary veined with ink

spilling from bare trees

 

December 6

In Winter

By Sarah Dickenson Snyder

 No fox or deer out my window

moving through the swath of snow,

only squirrels skittering on its crusty surface.

We too moved into icy edges,

clipped on snowshoes, marched

across fields, up hills and into forests.

Our flat, webbed steps

and narrow poles for steadying.

We were different animals then.

Now the pleasant ache in my legs,

my arms as if I might be growing

different parts, maybe wings

if I wished for such things.

I don’t. I like the feel of snow

beneath my soles. Loved its luster

in yesterday’s sun. I’ll stay put today

read a book, make granola,

sit with a cup of warm tea

that seems like a hymn

against this curtain of grey,

sky and earth

the same color today.

Snow has started,

little stars falling willy nilly

before the dark.

 

December 8

Storm Drive

By Keith Walker

driving through the night
ahead of the storm to your house –
lit, open, warm

in a highway dream
one night becomes an endless
year of time-lapse days

the passing cars glaze
the walls of the room touching
us like a blessing

we wake to a milk
lit world, the wash of breath, and
the silence of snow

 

December 9

By Matsuo Basho

The banked fire.

The shadow of the guest

Is on the wall.

 

December 10

First Storm

By Deb Franzoni

 

Weighted limbs bear no grudge

at unexpected storm

carry snow

beautifully

 

Firelight flickers

off carved wood panels

through the window

nearby

 

Night

I have a flashlight

to see all the wild

animals

 

don’t worry

about getting lost

follow my footprints

home

 

December 11

Merry

By Brian Bilston

 

It’s a word which only comes out at Christmas.

 

As for the rest of the year,

it’s as if it has been packed away in the attic

with the decorations and the tinsel,

waiting for its own time to shine.

 

Rarely do we play hell with it.

We do not let it loose for birthdays

or anniversaries; only in error does it intrude

on the happiness of a new year.

 

But at Christmas, it emerges blinking

into the light, red-cheeked and perky,

in a perfect state of mild inebriation,

writing itself into Christmas cards,

 

greeting friends on doorsteps,

embracing family before they take off their shoes,

warming strangers on icy pavements.

Merry Christmas, we say. Merry Christmas.

 

 

December 12

A Winter Morning

By Ted Kooser

 

A farmhouse window far back from the highway

speaks to the darkness in a small, sure voice.

Against this stillness, only a kettle’s whisper,

and against the starry cold, one small blue ring of fire.

 

December 13

Winter Trees

By William Carlos Williams

 

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

 

December 14

Dust of Snow

By Robert Frost

 

The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

 

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

 

December 15

Winter

By Annie Klier Newcomer 

moonlight skims over the snow-topped hills
reflects
footpath
around
frozen pond
reflects
light
with
deep shadows
reflects
moonlight, over the tops of hills, skimming

 

December 16

The Snow-Storm

By Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,

Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,

Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air

Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,

And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.

The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet

Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit

Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed

In a tumultuous privacy of storm…

 

December 17

To See It

By Laura Foley

 

We need to separate

to see the life we’ve made,

to leave our house

where someone waits, patiently,

warm beneath the sheets;

to don layers of armor,

sweater, coat, mittens, scarf,

to stride down the frozen road,

putting distance between us,

this cold winter morning,

to look back and see,

on the hilltop, our life,

lit from inside.

 

December 18

Sunset Creek

By Rennie McQuilkin

 

hardens

but before going under

 

for good, it’s flashy

midstream, unspools like

ribbon, crepuscular

 

reds and pinks. Where ice

meets water, it chimes.

 

December 19

Simplicity

By Jon Escher

 

Snow simplifies everything.

There is its simple whiteness

which we may savor.

Or the study we give

to the simple acts

of clearing it away,

breathing heavily

in the cold air,

resting on the handle

of the wide shovel

and looking in the distance

towards the south and east,

where the clouds are breaking

over the dark shoulder of a mountain.

 

December 20

There’s a Sing Outside in the Snow

By Alice Duggan

 

We leave our house stuffed full

with choices too hard to make,

 

to stand by each other

in the cold park

 

we leave our cat

 

and our tree standing naked

undecorated, cookies unbaked

 

to stand by each other

 

wrapped in blankets, wrapped in the sound

of singing voices, our voices singing

 

Go where I send thee—yes we will go

for what’s precious, eternal—

 

bringing us memory,

bringing its glow.

 

December 21

december 21

By Ted Kooser

 

Clear and five degrees.

 

Perfectly still this solstice morning,

in bone-cracking cold. Nothing moving,

or so one might think, but as I walk the road,

the wind held in the heart of every tree

flows to the end of each twig and forms a bud.

 

December 22

Solstice Sparrow

By Laura Foley

 

Listen to the sparrow

in the bare hours before dusk,

before the scent of snow,

its white diversion.

It is the simple voice

that cracks the growing ice

with singing,

its little life.

 

December 23

Behold, the Christmas Donkey

By Brooke Herter James

 

Long after the ferris wheel stops whirling,

the kettlecorn stops popping,

the lop-eared, blue-ribbon bunnies

go home in the arms of small children

dressed in their 4H whites —

Long after the oxen stop pulling,

the merry go round ceases to spin,

the livestock fencing is taken down

and the last pick-up pulls out of the muddy field —

Long after all of that,

the donkey still refuses to budge.

What an ass, her owner mumbles

pulling hard on her lead

as three large men push from behind.

Come on you son of a bitch get in the damn trailer.

But the donkey refuses to budge.

And who can blame her?

A whole Sunday at the county fair

in the company of piglets and lambs,

admiring passers-by, children

reaching with their small hands

to stroke her ancient face,

or trace the outline of the cross

on her back. A taste of corn nuts,

peanut shells, an old hot dog bun.

And now the first tiny star

appears in the deepening blue sky,

with the smell of hay underfoot,

headlamp lanterns, voices in the growing dark.

Get this, says one of the men, reading the sign

on her mostly dismantled pen,

Thousands of years ago it was she

who carried Mary to the stable,

heavy with child while Joseph walked alongside.

The men stop pushing and pulling.

Maybe she just needs a moment, for God’s sake,

says one to the others.  It was quite a day, after all.

 

December 24

Midnight in the Barn

By Rennie McQuilkin

 

I was nine and waiting

Christmas Eve

for the animals to kneel

 

and speak. Not to miss

a word, I was early, bearing

apples, carrots, turnips.

 

I gave my gifts,

I scratched the beasts,

I settled in the straw.

 

And just at twelve

by the bells from town

the miracle was

 

I spoke Clydesdale,

I carried on in Lamb

 

December 25

Like Reindeer

By Laura Foley

 

The two-year-old resists my hand,

walks on her own down the steep drive,

kicks a lump of snow, she calls, rock.

At the bottom of the hill, Christmas

waits in sacks, bright wrapper and ribbon

just visible through black plastic, cardboard

waving from the recycling bin in December wind.

A truck rumbles up just in time for us, and she calls

happily to Santa Claus, who jumps out and waves back,

as he loads the trash into his noisy sleigh.

In white beard, ski cap, florescent green vest,

I can see what she has seen in him,

and how he now begins to see himself,

as he Ho-Ho-Ho’s down the road,

red tail-lights twinkling, engine thundering

as he grinds the gears, like a hundred reindeer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contributing Poets

Edited by Brooke Herter James

All poems are public domain or reprinted with permission of author or publisher.

 

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) / public domain

Brian Bilston / author of Days Like These

Alice Duggan / author of A Brittle Thing

Jon Escher / author of Here and There: Poems of New Hampshire and California

Laura Foley / author of It’s This

Deb Franzoni / contributor to PoemCity Anthology 2023

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) / public domain

Robert Frost (1874-1963) / public domain

Brooke Herter James / author of A Drift of Swans

Ted Kooser / US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize Winner / tedkooser.net

Rennie McQuilkin (1936-2024) / Connecticut Poet Laureate / founder of Antrim House Press

Annie Klier Newcomer / author of Comets: Relationships that Wander

Sarah Dickinson Snyder / author of Now These Three Remain

Keith Walker / author of All That Names Us

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) / public domain

Anne Harding Woodworth / author of Trouble

 

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