Poetry Friday: Two Cold Morning Poems at the Turn of the Year

Because it's still Christmas:

Christmas Day in the Morning

My lady takes the pins from her hair,

Lets the heavy plaits fall. The sweaty nurse,

Half-asleep in the corner, hides her face

From a white streak of sunlight on the floor.

As it should, the day breaks clear

And hard. The basin-water's turned to ice.

In the courtyard, a clamor of geese,

Dogs quarreling underfoot, and everywhere

The blind cold, the dumbstruck wind.

In the crib, the staring child. My lady goes

On working the hard comb through her hair.

Bells crack apart the brittle air,

Shake the walls, shake the saints, their flat haloes,

The painted Christ, cold lilies in His hand.

(grateful acknowledgment to the editors of First Things, where this poem first appeared in print)


And for tomorrow:

New Year's Day

We woke late, to a brittle, ice-gray light.

Between us the baby stirred, fluttered an eye,

Slept on. Clouds passed the window:  dim, then bright.

In the street outside, a girl cried, Michael, I

Hate you, hate you. For Christ's sake, turn around.

 Heels ticked past. There was no other sound.

Here we are, I said. Another year

Gone. You said, Another year begun.

We kissed, parted. Over us hung a clear

Silence, transitory as the sun.

Read the rest of this week's Poetry Friday offerings here.  

PS:  Janet notes that the first poem makes a kind of counterpoint to Carl Sandburg's "Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind,"  which I confess that I'd forgotten all about and didn't have in my mind when I wrote the poem, so the crossover is kind of uncanny. I actually started that poem in the student union at the University of Utah, listening to Respighi's "Ancient Airs and Dances" on the piped-in radio. That's what happens when I try to write an  "Ancient Air and Dance"  -- cold air.