December 2022
Bio Note: Although the darkest days occur in December it is also the month of miracles, and quite unexpectedly, plays host to the birth of Light in the world. Perhaps Albert Camus expresses it best: “In the depth of winter, I finally learned within me lay an invincible summer.” How true, and amazingly, yet another miracle! These poems, each in their own way, speak to this idea.
White Night
From the warmth of our kitchen table
we watch the whirling crystals
and wordlessly wish for happier times.
This Christmas Eve
our scars ache from the cold,
remembered and recent sorrows
that would keep our hearts
frozen, fearful, gazing outside,
at what looks like another trouble
to stew over, when our pot
is already full.
Still, I can’t help but notice
the ascending spiral of white
caught in the street lamp glow,
the way these feathery flakes
make wings of the branches
on the twenty-foot Alberta Spruce,
the one you saved from a cutting
parading in its red-foil wrapped pot
as a Christmas tree so many years ago,
can’t help but heed the light
as our eyes meet, here, inside,
where we live.
Ode to a Vandal
When the rock that shattered my stained-glass window into a thousand tiny shards of rainbow hit the ground, I wondered if the boy whose slingshot thrust it felt so hated that the love I sent back would not be enough to stop him from hurting himself. Kneeling to retrieve his weapon, I slice my finger and watch two drops of blood cross his ebony stone; a decoration from my heart to his-- brave soul, to live in such a violent sad world.
Originally published in The New York Times
The Road
Here is the road: the light comes and goes then returns again. Be gentle with your fellow travelers as they move through the world of stone and stars whirling with you yet every one alone. The road waits. Do not ask questions but when it invites you to dance at daybreak, say yes. Each step is the journey; a single note the song.
Originally published in Bless the Day (Kodansha International)
©2022 Arlene Gay Levine
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