Offerings

On 12/22, I challenged my fellow poets on a yahoo group I belong to to post a new seasonal poem. I said I'd get one together & post it within two days. Here's what I wrote Christmas Eve, while the kids and D watched "A Child's Christmas in Wales." It's a family tradition to watch that film, and I hated missing it, but even this rough, rough draft of the poem was worth it, just for the spell that I felt while figuring it out, and the satisfaction of having written something new.


Offerings

This dark and tangled time of year calls
for the quick low flight of a swallow,
sweeping over the yellowed grass, over the briny
frost and mud. It calls for a swift thing racing
its long shadow along the earth, each wing-beat
a whisper that defies the dusk; a small body, warm
as a bullet in spite of the coming night. A song.

And I wish my heart were a swift thing, sweeping
godspeed below it in the frozen fields. I wish it were
heedless in its mission of the edges of the world;
reckless and singing through the cold air. I would be
abundant with alms, a benefactor to the chilled hills.
I would be the wind that wakes crocuses
and paper whites from the snow.

But no.
I am slow.
Plodding and carapaced. A creature of the sea.
I pick the longest night of winter to emerge on dry land.
I drag myself through the sand, handicapped
by the element of earth. I dig a simple chamber
for the evidence of what can't be called love,
and leave my offerings lightly covered.
This one act takes all I have.

And when it is done, I turn and haul
myself away again, crawl from the shore,
don't look behind me, nor wonder
if my gifts will thrive or fail.
Instead, I abandon them almost at once,
in exchange for nothing more
than the slow, slow pulse
of the deep and thoughtless sea.

RBP, c12/24/2005