“So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it. …
Ask the questions that have no answers. …
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
…Practice resurrection.”
-Wendell Berry
“…You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.
But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light…”
-an excerpt from Billy Collins’ On Turning Ten
Poetry has no rules, it has been said.
I say, rules exist. They lie
in how poetry should be read.
For instance, one cannot
read Octavio Paz
without first pausing
to sink into a faded velvet chair
of some bookstore
now out of mode and forgotten
And when
one reads the words of Billy
Collins it can only be
at a kitchen table
after dark
by the light of a single flame.
Shakespeare’s for the school halls, read
by one who thinks he knows
and Dickinson’s for the garden
with a single yellow rose.
Frenzied prose is for the birds,
scattered in the mist of ancient cobblestone
a panicked pandemonium set off
by the toss of a head
or sleight of hand.
But the poem, in all its outdated ink
remains unruffled
and to think
you nearly passed it by.
Christmas in the subtropics is different, but it teaches us something about waiting with hope-filled expectancy, not just for Christmas, but for Christ’s return.
Here, in the humid fog
(which, I imagine, might not be much
unlike The Night
in which the angel appeared)
here in the humid fog
the only snow looks like
paper scraps and
shaving cream. Bubbles and
these circles of vinyl we
press to the windowpanes
with hearts of hope
as though we were two again
or five or nine or eighty-four
as though we pressed up our noses
to the glass
waiting for papa to come home
or waiting for Christmas time
or waiting for snow.
But while we are grown
and while we are tall
and while we can reach the upper shelves, now —
we are still children.
We are still waiting for Papa,
every day,
and this window is a glass, dimly, and
we see glimmers of celestial light
inside claypots and
outside trimmed oil lamps, and
in cups of cold water, given.
Christmas day was the first time He came and
so now through the centuries since
we press our noses to the glass
reaching,
waiting,
longing
expecting,
Christmas Day, Round Two
(in which we will all be made wholecompleteperfected
and the sky will light up.)
These are tidings
of the greatest joy.
A bit later, He told us this, so that His
joy might be in us, and
our joy might be full.
So now let’s all press our noses
to the glass
and look heavenward
and reach high
and hope
and rejoice.
The Oaxacaborn Blog 