Mommy Brain

Te Deum
Charles Reznikoff

Not because of victories
I sing,
having none,
but for the common sunshine,
the breeze,
the largess of the spring.

Not for victory
but for the day’s work done
as well as I was able;
not for a seat upon the dais
but at the common table.

Concord Hymn
~Sung at the completion of the Battle Monument, July 4, 1837~

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1837~

If I’m lucky, I’ll get more sleep tonight.
Possibly there’s enough bread left
and I won’t have to shop. I’m hoping I’ll get
the chapter written and the poem will come out
right. If I am lucky, the phone won’t ring
all day and the computer will obey me
and not go blank like my mind does.
If all goes well, the slugs will drown blissfully
in their saucers of beer. Maybe the deer
won’t eat the tulips. Perhaps it will rain
enough for the dwindled creek to run
again, sibilant, and then may the rain
stop tomorrow, leaving only a pleasing
liquid bubble and blur to thread the ravine.
If she is brave, my daughter will someday
find the self within herself. If I am blessed,
she will forgive me. If the meteorologist
is right, the dry muscle of cold wind will weaken
and again we’ll swing the windows wide.

~ Luci Shaw

Sonnet
Christina Rossetti

Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome
Has many sonnets: so here now shall be
One sonnet more, a love sonnet, from me
To her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home,
To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee
I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;
Whose service is my special dignity,
And she my lodestar while I go and come
And so because you love me, and because
I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath
Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honored name:
In you not fourscore years can dim the flame
Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws
Of time and change and mortal life and death.

Any other House and Bones fans out there? Weren’t last night’s episodes terrific? (Spoiler: If you are watching on DVD, and are a season behind, you’ll want to scroll down past the next two paragraphs.)

I loved how House had them all thinking he had neuro-syph and that the antibiotics were making him “nicer.” Also, I felt for the wife of the patient - the look on her face after he said, “I guess I don’t like catsup. I wonder what else I don’t like.” - that was heartbreaking.

And how precious were Bones and Booth with baby Andy? Bones trying to relate to him like a logical adult: “Elephants are not purple.” And then when she started to warm up: “Phalanges! Dancing phalanges!” Leading to her blowing a raspberry into his neck - after making sure no one was watching, of course. It was a great episode. I can’t believe we only have four more to go until we’re done for the summer. The writer’s strike sure took a bite out of the TV season!

We are not partaking of American Idol this season. I don’t miss it at all - which is strange, since I used to love watching it. I thought that last season’s singers were just “meh,” though. Then last May, the choice came down to the AI finale or the Lost finale. I chose Lost, and decided we were done with AI. Natalie was bummed at first, but she hasn’t said a word about it for months, so I guess she’s over it. She’s in a huge mystery phase, and is re-watching the DVDs of Monk in order. Gotta love Netflix.

Speaking of Netflix, Kevin and I discovered a great show. Anyone out there watch Psych? It’s a USA series; I think it runs right after Monk. It’s very funny - and I have loved Dule Hill ever since he played Charlie on West Wing.

I haven’t just been sitting around watching television, though, I’ve also been sitting around reading. Friday afternoon, after I finished Anna Karenina, I read The Radiation Sonnets: For My Love, in Sickness and in Health, which is a collection of 43 sonnets Jane Yolen wrote while her husband was undergoing radiation for a brain tumor. Every night during treatment, she wrote one sonnet before bed. They are heartbreaking, funny, poignant, and wonderful. When she finished the book, her husband David Stemple was still alive and had a good prognosis. I looked her up on Wikipedia and found that he later died - in 2006, I think. The book of sonnets was published in 2003. Highly recommended.

I also read Debra Ginsberg’s memoir About My Sisters this weekend. I have three sisters, like Ms. Ginsberg, and so much of it rang true, even though their family’s “style” is completely different from ours. Also recommended.

I am currently halfway through Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. You never know what you’re getting with a Gaiman book! The kids and I adored Coraline, even though it was by far the creepiest book we’d ever read aloud. I tried to read American Gods, and couldn’t get past the first couple of chapters - too bizarrely sexual. (Is bizarrely a word?) Michelle read Anansi Boys and said it wasn’t like that at all, which prompted me to listen to his Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders on audiobook. I don’t even know quite how to describe it. Some stories I liked very much, and you should definitely hear him read his poem “The Day the Saucers Came”. (The link is to a video of Neil Gaiman visiting Google to talk about Fragile Things. He reads the poem at the beginning of the video.) Some of the stories in Fragile Things were disturbing, others funny and fascinating, and a couple were downright horrific. He is the only author who should definitely perform the audiobooks of his own work - he is one of the best audiobook readers I’ve listened to, and I’ve listened to a bunch.

Anyway, back to Neverwhere, which I’m about halfway through, and absolutely loving. It’s fantasy, dark fantasy, but not horror. At least, not so far. He is a craftsman when it comes to words, and very funny. An example:

“Richard had noticed that events were cowards: they didn’t occur singly, but they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once.”

That’s how last week felt. Blech.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough. Have any of you been watching or reading or listening to anything wonderful? Please share.

I finished this amazing collection last night. Madeleine L’Engle was truly a remarkable woman, and her poetry is beautiful and haunting and joyous and funny and all the things you could possibly want poetry to be.

The Ordering of Love: The New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L’Engle is a collection of poems that date from 1969 to 1998. I knew that Ms. L’Engle was a Christian from reading A Circle of Quiet, but I had never read her poetry before. Her most frequent topic in her poetry, especially in the later poems, is the working and walking out of her faith.

There are poems of praise that would fit well in any liturgical service. There are poems of questioning and doubt and frustration with God. There are poems written from the point of view of biblical characters such as Noah’s wife, Japheth’s daughter, Simeon, Martha, David, and many others. I have so many I want to share with you, and I’m sure you’ll see many of her poems making an appearance here through the next few years. Here are just a couple to give you a taste of what I’m raving about:

Word

I, who live by words, am wordless when
I try my words in prayer. All language turns
To silence. Prayer will take my words and then
Reveal their emptiness. The stilled voice learns
To hold its peace, to listen with the heart
To silence that is joy, is adoration.
The self is shattered, all words torn apart
In this strange patterned time of contemplation
That, in time, breaks time, breaks words, breaks me,
And then, in silence, leaves me healed and mended.
I leave, returned to language, for I see
Through words, even when all words are ended.

I, who live by words, am wordless when
I turn me to the Word to pray. Amen.

Sonnet 1

Your place is empty, empty in the night
When I reach out with hand or foot to touch
Your living flesh, the warmth that offers such
An affirmation, oh, it is not right
The bed is empty, made for two, not one.
The reflex does not die, to touch, to reach,
To find. I think it will never be done,
And I am glad of that. It seems that each
Of us find our own answers in this grief.
I know you have been here. You have been here.
The empty place is full of deep relief
Because it still is yours and still is dear.
But oh! That my dear love were in my bed
And my life flesh to your live flesh still wed.

5 out of 5 stars

I haven’t posted much lately, have I? We’re in the middle of our toughest part of the school year: the stretch between spring break and summer break. Michelle homeschools four weeks on, one week off year-round (with a little bit longer break at Christmas and a two-week stretch in the summer), and during the school year I envy their week-long breaks. But now that spring is finally here, I’m very much looking forward to summer break. I got so much reading done last year during the summer! I’d take the kids and my books to the park, and let them run wild while I read the hours away.

And, there’s nothing that can make you look forward to summer break more than next year’s school books arriving on your doorstep. History and science for next year arrived today, and it’s crazy that I still get that little jolt of excitement as I look at the books and think that I can start planning soon!

Kevin has taken the kids to Tae Kwon Do, and Josiah is outside playing, so the house is quiet. (It’s wonderful.) I’m planning to pop Slings and Arrows: Season 1 into the DVD player and fold some laundry while I watch. I haven’t seen any of this series yet, but it comes highly recommended by Mrs. Mm-v.

Since this is still National Poetry Month, I thought I’d start you off with some poetry links.

~ YouTube has a ton of Billy Collins’ poems read to accompanying animation. I don’t quite know how to describe it, but the effect is wonderful. My favorites so far: Forgetfulness, Man in Space, The Country, and Sweet Talk.

~ The Telegraph has an article about the popularity and need for fantasy in our fiction.

~ This article confirms what I’ve been noticing as I shop for food in the past few months. It could be worse, though - as Kris pointed out.

~ MawBooks is having a book giveaway in honor of her 100th post. Click over for details.

~ There are still a couple days to enter the All Girls Getaway contest.

On Saturday, Josiah and I are headed south to Post Falls to visit Marni and Hans and their boys. Hans has graciously offered to watch the boys while Marni and I head to the theater to see Leatherheads. My sister and George Clooney all in one day - what could be better?

Have a great weekend, everyone.

It seems spring has finally sprung in our neck of the woods. The snow is all gone, and we’ve had some sunny days. Of course, on Sunday when I was overly optimistic and took the boys to the skate park, I froze. The sun was out, but the breeze was still frigid. A few more weeks, though, and we should be able to pack away the sweatshirts and bring out the t-shirts.

I’ve had more time to read this week, since my freelancing has dried up for a few months (unless I pick up another client, of course). Anna Karenina has finally grabbed me - it sure took awhile! I also finished listening to the audiobook of Blasphemy by Douglas Preston. It was a good sci-fi thriller, but it was sure apparent that he has a very low opinion of Christians. Or maybe just Christians in the media. Sadly enough, the horrible things that the televangelist and other “Christian” characters do in the book seem altogether plausible given the state of the church, which is terrible to admit, but true.

I started listening to Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman. Usually, I do not like it when authors read their own books on audio. I put up with Frank Peretti’s reading of Monster, although it was extremely exaggerated; I could not listen to Elizabeth Berg read her Dream While You’re Feeling Blue. If you’re an author, you should never read your own book aloud unless you have been assured repeatedly (by people not on your payroll) that you are a terrific read-aloud-er; just don’t do it. Gaiman, on the other hand, is a wonderful reader. You can tell that he loves words; he seems to taste each one as he speaks it. I read his Coraline aloud to the kids (we all loved it) and I tried to read American Gods, but couldn’t get past the graphic nature of it. Michelle read Ananzi Boys, though, and assured me it was completely different, so I guess he’s one of those authors who writes a completely different book each time. Fragile Things is a collection of short stories and poems, and so far I’m enjoying it very much. Anyone else read any of his work?

~ Hey, it’s not a rumor! The New Kids on the Block are reuniting for a CD and a tour. The music of my high school years.

~ Poetry180 is a web site sponsored by the Library of Congress. It contains a list of 180 poems - one for each day of a school year. The poems are meant for high schoolers, and I haven’t read them all, so definitely pre-read before sending your students there.

~ This Grand Avenue comic should give fans of math and art alike a few chuckles.

~ The Telegraph has an interview with author Jodi Picoult.

~ Lawanda is celebrating her 3rd Blogoversary - head over, congratulate her, and enter to win a free book.

I am nobody.
I hide in myself,
Velvet-lined
Against the cold stares
Of the world.

I am nobody.
I keep away from the hatred,
Stone-clad
Against those who mock
And deride.

I am nobody.
I remain in darkness,
Wool-insulated
Against the pain
Of their contempt.

But when I am asleep
I am somebody.
Stripped naked
Of all the trappings of myself.
An empress of lands of plenty,
With sackfuls of love, respect
And self-worth.

So please,
Let me sleep.

Author’s Note: I wrote this poem in empathy with anyone who suffers at the eyes of others whether disabled, depressed or just a bit sad. My nights are filled with such joy travelling the worlds beyond wakefulness and I wish such release for everyone who needs it.

~ The above poem was written by this amazing 10-year-old girl who has cerebral palsy. My mom e-mailed about her after she saw her story on ABC News. Be sure to click on the link to read her essay that won the Times Educational Supplement Write Away Competition in Jan. 2006. She’s truly remarkable.

We have been enjoying poetry from these books this week:

Oh, No! Where Are My Pants? and Other Disasters: Poems compiled by Lee Bennett Hopkins

Science Verse by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith

People in Glass Houses

I build my house of shining glass
of crystal
prisms
light, clear,
delicate.
The wind blows
Sets my rooms to singing.
The sun’s bright rays
are not held back
but pour
their radiance through the rooms
in sparkles of delight.

And what, you ask, of rain
that leaves blurred muddy streaks
across translucent purity?
What, you ask,
of the throwers of stones?

Glass shatters,
breaks,
sharp fragments pierce my flesh,
darken with blood.
The wind tinkles brittle splinters
of shivered crystal.
The stones crash through.

But never mind.
My house
My lovely shining
fragile broken house
is filled with flowers
and founded on a rock.

~ from The Ordering of Love: The New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L’Engle

How’s your April going so far? Did anyone prank you on the first?

We started into our normal week on Tuesday after a long weekend of visiting with family, and it was hard. We had such a great time visiting, but it made for a very busy few days and none of us were ready to jump into school on Tuesday morning. It didn’t help that the rest of the neighborhood kids were all out playing, since this was the public school system’s Spring Break.

It also didn’t help things when I realized I’ve been too lax about doing history this year and we won’t finish by June, and will be continuing with history through the summer if we want to finish The Story of the World II: The Middle Ages in time to start book 3 in September. Sigh. Oh, well, at least we’ve been enjoying what we have learned and the kids seem to be retaining names and people groups well, if not exact dates.

After last weekend, I’m really craving a few days of down time, but I won’t be getting it. Saturday, Noah and Natalie will go through promotion at Tae Kwon Do, testing for their green belts. Sunday, I hope to take the kids to see Nim’s Island, which is playing in our little one-screen theater.

I’ve got lots of links for you this week, and I’ll start off with the poetry-related in honor of National Poetry Month:

~ The Telegraph ran a series called English Poetry Masters, with articles on Chaucer, Shelley, Christina Rosetti, Milton, and Robert Browning. Each article also includes a sample poem.

~ Sherry at Semicolon linked to The English Room’s 30 Days of Poetry. This is a great way to get your middle-grade kids writing poetry. You might even want to write along with them.

Now, on to the book-related:

~ The Guardian has an interview with Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief (which I loved).

~ Literary Feline is having a book giveaway in honor of Give a Friend a Book Week.

~ I’m a little behind the times, but I guess the latest craze in evangelical circles is a book called The Shack by William P. Young. I have not read the book, and so will not give an opinion, but I encourage you to read this review by Tim Challies. If you’d like, you can also check out this You Tube video from a Mark Driscoll sermon.

Now, for some opinion pieces:

~ It’s a Bratz Country, by Rod Dreher of Crunchy Con. Hat tip: Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer. Here’s a quote to peak your interest:

You will hear from very few people that the toxic culture in which we’re raising our children of all races is destroying them. The facts from the new study are pretty shocking for all Americans. What is it going to take for adults to realize how badly we are failing the younger generations? We’re going to keep on and keep on sexualizing little girls, acculturating them to the idea that they are sex objects. We are not, apparently, going to raise any effective objection to the increased sexualization of our culture by taking concrete and proactive measures in our own families, churches and communities to be countercultural in this regard. We’re simply going to assume there’s nothing we can do, or even blame the Other (it’s the right-wingers who fight comprehensive sex ed; it’s the left-wingers who are turning the culture trashy) instead of asking ourselves what we can and should do to build up a healthy and morally sane self-image in girls and boys.

~ The Nice Squad: Would you dare to say turn the music down?

I use Debrett’s Guide To Etiquette as my bible, and am lucky enough to know gentlemen who make me swoon by rushing ahead to open a door for me, or by insisting they take the correct side of the pavement. I’m clearly living in Brief Encounter, aren’t I?

So you can imagine how well it goes down when I get on a bus and an MP3 player mobile phone is tinnily blaring out some R&B nonsense about gold-plated Bentleys, b*tches and bling to the annoyance of everyone else.

On to politics:

~ Senior Democrats mull Al Gore’s nomination. Wouldn’t that make things interesting? (Shudder)

Some links to make you laugh:

~ Cathy Thorne who draws the wonderful Everyday People comics has a new website. Here’s one my favorites.

~ Another great edition of Zits.

~ This reminds me of how Natalie remembered acute, right, and obtuse angles.

~ I Am Woman - Size 36 D from Melanie at The Refrigerator Door.

~ Hugh Laurie from House singing his original song, America.

~ The Ultimate Cubicle Prank - Hat Tip: Don’t Try This At Home.

That list should keep you busy! Have a great weekend.

Since April is National Poetry Month, I wanted to pass on a few resources to help you incorporate poetry into your life in the next few weeks.

~ Poets.org, the web site of the Academy of American Poets, will e-mail you a poem a day during the month of April.

~ The kids and I recently enjoyed If I Were in Charge of the World and Other Worries: Poems for Children and their Parents and Sad Underwear and Other Complications: More Poems for Children and Their Parents by Judith Viorst. The kids love funny poems; I enjoyed the fact that there were quite a few thoughtful ones sprinkled in, too.

~ Two of my favorite poetry books for grownups are The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry: 1957-1982 and The Trouble With Poetry: And Other Poems by Billy Collins. I am currently reading The Ordering of Love: The New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L’Engle, and I can tell already that it will join my list of favorites.

Who are your favorite poets? Any favorite poems you’d like to share?

When Katy at Fallible announced that she now had an agent to help guide her literary career, I was so very happy for her. I also started reading her agent’s blog. She gives great writing advice (like this), and she’s also hosting The Yo-Dawg-Show-Me-What-You-Got Double Decker CHALLENGE. There are two parts to the competition: submit the first line of a novel - a first line that will make her want to keep reading; second, after she chooses the winning first line, submit the first 300 words to go with the winning first line. If you’re a writer, the prize is something all unpublished writers pine after, so please click over and check out all the details. The deadline for the first phase is Saturday at midnight her time, so don’t wait.

Now, onto a totally different and completely unrelated topic: colonoscopies. Yes, I know, not what you expect from my blog. However, I read this funny and important column by Dave Barry about hist first colonoscopy - and why, after avoiding it for 10 years, he finally had it done.

OK. You turned 50. You know you’re supposed to get a colonoscopy. But you haven’t. Here are your reasons:

1. You’ve been busy.

2. You don’t have a history of cancer in your family.

3. You haven’t noticed any problems.

4. You don’t want a doctor to stick a tube 17,000 feet up your butt.

Let’s examine these reasons one at a time. No, wait, let’s not. Because you and I both know that the only real reason is No. 4. This is natural. The idea of having another human, even a medical human, becoming deeply involved in what is technically known as your ”behindular zone” gives you the creeping willies.

Now that I’ve shown you how humorous even this topic can be, click over and read the column. And, if you’re over fifty and have yet to be screened (yes, Dad, I mean you), make an appointment.

And, since it’s Good Friday, I leave you with this:

I read of Christ crucified,
the only begotten Son
sacrificed to flesh and time
and all our woe. He died
and rose, but who does not tremble
for His pain, His loneliness,
and the darkness of the sixth hour?
Unless we grieve like Mary
at His grave, giving Him up
as lost, no Easter morning comes.

~from The Way of Pain, by Wendell Berry

As my reading horizons have expanded, I am finding more connections in my reading. Mrs. Mental Multivitamin calls this synchronicity - that little zing you get when something you’re reading is connected to something else you’ve just read or are working on or were just watching… I love it when that happens!

A few weeks ago, I listened to (and thoroughly enjoyed) an audiobook version of Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier. Burning Bright is the story of two young teens - one Dorset boy and one Londoner girl - who meet and form a friendship with the poet and printer William Blake. The book describes Blake’s painstaking method for producing his books. Blake believed that to separate his poems from the drawings that accompanied them was to lose some of the truth - and so he developed his own method of handpainting plates and making each copy of his books by hand. His most famous was Songs of Innocence and Experience, which includes the familiar Tyger, tyger, burning bright… and others I am certain you would recognize. In Chevalier’s novel, the poem London, which expresses Blake’s sorrow over the social and political inequities in his town, is quoted often:

I wander thro’ each charter’d street,
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice; in every ban,
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

(The above contains Blake’s original spelling and punctuation.)

I’ve been curious about Blake and his book ever since I finished Ms. Chevalier’s novel. When I was browsing the poetry shelf at Barnes & Noble on Thursday, I found this treasure:

Songs of Innocence and Experience

This is a slim paperback Oxford University Press edition - it didn’t look like much sitting on the shelf. When I took it off the shelf, however, I found that it includes color reproductions of every one of Blake’s original plates. This is a beautiful book. I read it over the weekend, drooling over the illustrations, and I will be reading it again.

Two other books I picked up at B&N:

I opened the Conrad and read his Author’s Note. (I did not, however, read the introduction. I love the B&N Classics, but I very rarely read the introduction by the literary “expert” until after I read the book itself - they have a tendency to give every plot point away. The person who wrote the endnotes even gave away the ending of the story in a note that could have very easily explained coal ships without ruining the story for me. Bah.) I then read the first story, “Youth.” It is a good sea yarn, and kept me enthralled with descriptions like this one:

“Between the darkness of earth and heaven she was burning fiercely upon a disc of purple sea shot by the blood-red play of gleams; upon a disc of water glittering and sinister. A high, clear flame, an immense and lonely flame, ascended from the ocean, and from its summit the black smoke poured continuously at the sky. She burned furiously; mournful and imposing like a funeral pile kindled in the night, surrounded by the sea, watched over by the stars. A magnificent death had come like a grace, like a gift, like a reward to that old ship at the end of her laborious days. The surrender of her weary ghost to the keeping of stars and sea was stirring like the sight of a glorious triumph. The masts fell just before daybreak, and for a moment there was a burst and turmoil of sparks that seemed to fill with flying fire the night patient and watchful, the vast night lying silent upon the sea. At daylight she was only a charred shell, floating still under a cloud of smoke and bearing a glowing mass of coal within.”

~from “Youth,” by Joseph Conrad

I then opened The Best American Short Stories 2007, and read the Introduction by guest editor Stephen King, who had the task of choosing the twenty stories (out of hundreds) to be included in this volume. In the intro, Mr. King lamented the fact that the journals and periodicals that publish short fiction have been relegated to the bottom shelf of the magazine rack (if you can find them at all) and speculated about what that is doing to the art of short fiction:

“Instead, let us consider what the bottom shelf does to creative writers - especially the young ones, who are well represented in this volume - who still care, sometimes passionately, about the short story. What happens to a writer when he or she realizes that his or her audience is shrinking almost daily? Well, if the writer is worth his or her salt, he or she continues on nevertheless - because it’s what God or genetics (possibly they are the same) has decreed, or out of sheer stubbornness, or maybe because it’s such a kick to spin tales. Possibly a combination. And all that’s good.

What’s not so good is that writers - even those who claim to spurn Shakespeare’s bubble reputation - write for whatever audience is left. In too many cases, that audience happens to consist of other writers and would-be writers who are reading the various literary magazines (and The New Yorker, of course; the holy grail of the young fiction writer) not to be entertained but to get an idea of what sells there. And this kind of reading isn’t real reading, the kind where you just can’t wait to find out what happens next (think “Youth,” by Joseph Conrad, or “Big Blonde,” by Dorothy Parker).”

Zing! A connection. And now I’m excited to read the stories that King chose out of hundreds and hundreds to include in this book, because if he loved “Youth,” by Conrad, and I loved “Youth,” by Conrad, chances are I’m going to love some of the stories in this book.

Connections. Aren’t they fun?

I like days
With a snow-white collar,
And nights when the moon
Is a silver dollar,
And hills are filled
With eiderdown stuffing
And your breath makes smoke
Like an engine puffing.

I like days
When feathers are snowing,
And all the eaves
Have petticoats showing,
And the air is cold,
And the wires are humming,
But you feel all warm…

With Christmas coming!

~Aileen Fisher

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast keep warm this small hot star fallen to my arms.
(Rest…You who have had so far to come.)
Now nearness satisfies the body of God sweetly.
Quiet He lies whose vigor hurled a universe.
He sleeps whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps to sprout a world.
Charmed by dove’s voices, the whisper of straw, He dreams, hearing no music from His other
spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes… He is curtailed who overflowed all skies, all years.
Older than eternity, now He is new.
Now native to earth as I am, nailed to my poor planet, caught that I might be free,
Blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,
Brought to this birth for me to be new-born,
And for Him to see me mended, I must see Him torn.

~Luci Shaw