Christmas in verse

December's voice
beats against my window
demands my attention
this insistent voice
shouts and strains
in the winter darkness:
something about wonder
that flutters into my
ice-shuttered world
something about hope
that asks me to perceive
a glow beyond the gloom
something about light
that shines on ravens' wings
and midnight snow
something about joy
that joins me
as I stoke the fire
this old familiar voice
asks me to carve new stars
in a lackluster sky
and bids me listen
for a baby's new-life cry
in my weary heart.
December, you deceive me:
you are not the
end
of the year. You are the
start. Maril Crabtree Full Moon Christmas All night it snowed moonlight.
Ghosts of past snowfalls
haunted the grass.
Star choirs sang carols of silence
in the dawn sanctuary
of Christmas.
Water and shore met
in tidal reunion,
as we're pulled to the home place
we crave, then leave on the ebb
clutching our memories –
sand grains that dance in the waves.
Full moon and choir
tucked under snow clouds,
wind whips the darkness
as Christmas expires.
Inside the houses
the embers remember
the warmth of the holiday fire. Peg Ormsby The Day Before Christmas I want to tell about stars stuffed
behind storm clouds,
the rain-fresh scent of evergreens
as I step out in the pre-dawn
dark
to scoop the morning paper
from a driveway puddle;
and say how the small lights
on the tree warm the front
window
when I gaze back at the house,
quiet now before it wakes
to life tonight
when my two children
and their spouses arrive.
I'm expectant, keeping vigil,
as another mother did, awaiting
a child years ago
in a makeshift abode
with its thatch roof
and a star shining through,
showing the way. Christine Vovakes