A Christmas Card

For Susan

Who Loves Words

The Eve of Christmas Day

Poetry and Musicby Arlen Clarke

Wintered cornstalks stand like silent sentinels beneath the low, gun-metal clouds,

And snow-filled forests

creak and moan

in the muffled half-light of grey day;

Rocks, like hard-candied clumps

mired in their earthen tombs, mutely gaze into the solstice sky;

And wild, wispy winds puff at dry snow like

a poof-breath on birthday

candles.

Ice-snapped cracks

form a web on the frozen

roof of the bubbling brook,

While icicled spears

hang like a hard, white curtain across miniature waterfalls.

As fading evening

light gracefully bows to the blue-

black mantle of twilight,

the evensong of the cardinal, perched in the

green garland of a fir tree, announces

the end of day.

Rising in the distance, gentle-sloped, blue-grey

mountainsides welcome the natal night,

cradling in their

shadowy folds the

descending December

dark;

And the deep dome of

space looms like a

blackened canopy in the moony void;

Crystalline, thin-sliced air Strikes the winter tide hour.

And a Star shines down upon the meadowed miles,

Singing its lullaby, its ethereal dream-song;

Cooing the world into a sleepy,

silent, slumber of peace.

And Christmas has come.