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.