ADVENT
Bran’s tousled head hangs eloquent
From every night-burned alder.
Rust red are the wounded bracken hillsides,
Sour the long sedge.
Steep is the road,
All distance vapour.
Every hedge, a calligraphy of secrets
Taught by italic rains, slanted weather.
The trees stripped to syllables,
Each a sharp tongue and a scourge for empty vastness.
All glory hidden,
Sunk into the small, warm hearts of huddled things.
In barn and byre,
A shuffled silence,
Summer days mulled over,
Scented green against the cold.
Anointed, we are, with slow light,
Awaiting an older cermony:
A star in the east.
A sure opening and a soft, certain closing.
—
simonhlilly 