Brat Farrar (bratfarrar) wrote,
Brat Farrar
bratfarrar

Poem: Untrimming the Tree

Now all that scintillation is a chore.
What they so recently assembled
Piece by piece in imitation
Of every year for twenty years ago

Each day became more everyday.
The delicate contrivances ignored,
This clutter in a corner of the eye
Now is an hour on the stepladder

And woman’s work. This afternoon,
The sunlight brave and January thin
Reflecting on her, she sets down
Lightlier than they lifted them

Angel and orb and cardboard cornucopia,
The candy cane old as the eldest child.
Once she has packed away the annual farm
(Each cotton sheep plump as a thumb),

Hanging the glassy surface of the lake
Up on its hook in the back bedroom,
She sends the snowy field out to the laundry.
Arms full of a great weightlessness she arises

Toward the airless year in the black attic.
The Season’s Greetings flutter in the trash
Out in the alley and the tree,
Naked, imitates mere nature.

All’s done but this—that at the last she blind
The windows of the Advent Calendar
From which next year again shall stare
The forest animals as day by day,

As the great Day approaches
Until the Manger stands revealed,
Husband and child and wife, restored
Out of the storm, once more shall be assembled.

- John N. Morris
Tags: poetry
Subscribe

Posts from This Journal “poetry” Tag

  • Written in his Bible...

    E'en such is time! which takes in trust Our youth, our joys, and all we have; And pays us naught but age and dust, Which, in the dark and silent…

  • poem: Nature, that washed her hands in milk

    - Sir Walter Raleigh Nature, that washed her hands in milk, And had forgot to dry them, Instead of earth took snow and silk, At love’s request to…

  • poem: May

    - Hilaire Belloc This is the laughing-eyed amongst them all: My lady's month. A season of young things. She rules the light with harmony, and…

  • Post a new comment

    Error

    default userpic

    Your IP address will be recorded 

    When you submit the form an invisible reCAPTCHA check will be performed.
    You must follow the Privacy Policy and Google Terms of use.
  • 0 comments