On the First Sunday of Advent--Violet

Somehow, I don't think it makes sense to wish God a merry Christmas.

Perhaps this is necessary in a world in which God and Christmas are divorced? But isn't making a happy birthday cake for Jesus an admission that we've entirely bought into a secularized Christmas and have to make up novel, gimmicky ways to "reinsert" Christ in our celebration?

A poem for Advent:

Advent Visitation by Luci Shaw

Even from the cabin window I sensed the wind's

contagion begin to infect the rags of leaves.

Then the adlers gilded to it, obeisant, the way

angels are said to bow, covering their faces with

their wings, not solemn, as we suppose, but

possessed of a sudden, surreptitious hilarity.

When the little satin wind arrived

I felt its slide through the cracked-open door

(a wisp of prescience? a change in the weather?),

and after the small push of breath--You

entering with your air of radiant surprise,

I the astonished one.

These still December mornings

I fancy I live in a clear envelope of angels

like a cellophane womb. Or a soap bubble,

the colors drifting, curling. Outside

everything's tinted rose, grape, turquoise,

silver--the stones by the path, the skin of sun

on the pond ice, at night the aureola of

a pregnant moon, like me, iridescent,

almost full term with light.