“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas”
Or so the happy lyrics go
Houses decorated with wreaths
Bright red ribbons and great big bows
In darkness, lights glimmer beneath;
Outside inflatable plastic Santas
Tied to stakes in ground; held in place
Watching our to - fro momenta
In superficial shopping race—
Being somewhat apathetic
Perhaps we, too, need tied to ground,
To consider the synthetics –
Hol-i-day fun tends to confound
“O Holy Night…”
Bright lights and decorative trim
Softened by voices in choir
Ah! “Oh Come Let Us Adore Him;”
Beauty inside just as the stars,
Advent candle announcing joy
Shepherds like us sought the Christ-child—
Praise God for birth of baby boy
In a lowly manger so mild—
Christ holds us firmly in place
In the realness of our ponder,
Separating the rush from grace,
One is giv’n Hol-y-day wonders.
-Evelyn Pearl Carpenter Anderson
a distant bell tolls
in ground shaking momenta
soft clouds drift on by.
© Harry J Horsman 2012
I.
Silver apple of the moon
Laying prostrate on the lake
Silver apple of the moon
Smooth, un-moved, unmarred by wake
Lean down, finger
The bright skin –
It peels. Linger,
A flicker of flocking moths congeals within.
II.
An old maternal willow
With rheumatic roots
Leans low
Over the water, tilts
Its fretting yellow
Mane, covers the deep & heart-shaped hollow
III
The ocean is dark
And settles like onyx iron
These are the hardest surfaces
In a ship’s journey:
A starless sky, an engine
Sobbing in a distant room,
Thoughts, objects without shape;
A nauseated heart leaning over
Memory’s rail
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.