Advent

Advent was a time when autumn days
Swerved away from half clad trees,
Their heaps of burning tannin-incensed leaves
Sent smoking toward a hush of colder air.
We waited for the first snow.
We waited for the leap to earth of Advent love.

Advent was a time for ancient chant,
For unisons of simple mystic scales
And tales of prophecies fulfilled.
There and here appeared for sale the lots of piney trees,
Absent rainbow lights and tinseled ornaments,
While purple was the hue of liturgies.

Advent was a time of pregnant pause, of pondering.
The Christmas cards with forest deer near chapel limned,
Its amber windows casting angled glow on glitter dusted snow
Beneath a moonlit midnight sky – they made us know
That once, in time, the holy one was infant born as are we all.
And so we believed in the leap to earth of infant love.

What mother does not see divinity
When first her newborn’s eyes she joins?
What’s not yet writ but pure, sure gaze?
An endless possibility of Advent love, of avatars
As old as stars? Ave, Maria. This is who awaits you
When the infant’s laid within your arms.
This is Advent, the leap to earth of infant love.