XCII-XCIV

    

XCII.

When we get down to ten below, the air
becomes as sharp and slicing as a knife.
It cuts away our warmth and so our life;
thus let the winter traveller beware.

We fortify ourselves against the cold
all armored up in fleece and woolen wear
so rather like a human polar bear
beneath the jotuns’ icy stranglehold.

A candle burns defiant in the dark,
a tiny point of life and light and heat.
Amidst an ocean black, ‘tis but a spark.

I’m sick of all the weariness and strife
and yet the candle’s hope is quite a feat.
A single flame can thaw the frost of life.


XCIII.

So God is born in darkness, as are we;
no Zeus upon his lofty throne on high
but here to sweat and bleed and laugh and die
to show us what a human being can be.

The darkness is where holiness occurs.
Beneath the harsh while light of brightest day
penumbral possibility holds sway.
There bring Him frankincense and gold and myrrh.

In mud and blood the Gardener returns,
unrecognized by we who keep the watch,
to kindle flame with which the world will burn.

And when in us His Spirit catches spark,
Her flame shall claim and cleanse the sinner’s splotch.
Salvation finds gestation in the dark.


XCIV.

The whiteness has a blindness of its own.
It coats and covers all the land around
while piling up three feet upon the ground
until the snow is glowing all alone.

Like grace, it overcomes our many sins
and blankets all in quiet like a shroud
until the sighing wind is sounding loud.
It bites our nose and lungs; we draw it in.

The kindness and the cruelty combine—
as justice and so mercy both are truth—
to play with melancholy on the mind.

And yet a peacefulness this tension bears,
stark beauty of a winter red in tooth,
and this I find conducive to my prayers.