The First Friday Poem: Advent #1
Here I go, carving out a new streak. As I wrote this week, I’m setting out to publish a poem each Friday. Why? Because writing poetry opens my eyes to see the world differently and stretches my imagination. It serves as a creative tool for the examined life, too.
I’ve been working today’s poem since the Advent season, those few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was a particularly dark season in some ways, a season in which my family parted ways with a church we’d been members of for a half-decade. (This might explain the tone.) It’s a poem built around the liturgical season of bygone weeks, and it was inspired in part by Gerard Manley Hopkins’ classic poem, “When Kingfishers Catch Fire.”
Advent #1
Hopkins’ Christ played in the places
where the living catch fire,
kingfishers and kin alike.
My Christ stands silent
where the devil dances:
in the copper confusion;
before the Advent candles
burn to the bottom;
before the divine baby
feasts at the ever-virgin’s breast;
before love grows into Knowledge
of how a child’s play
slits the soft stretch
of winter’s throat.
***WAKE UP WITH ME***
THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.