O Come Emmanuel

Second Tuesday of Advent


              Come, let us worship the Lord, the King who is to come.

Icy light at dawn.

Every frosted branch and blade and brier
a glass menagerie 
beneath
    a flight of crows;
          dark scarves trailing
                across our glistened
                      dreaming.
                       


I drove my daughter down the dark lane to catch her bus.

A few stars and Jupiter glinting through our foggy attention;
our love like a meteor through the cathedrals of morning,
brightening the deep-blue as we part,

as we hold this nebulous in our hearts, 
in the moments throughout our day.

We are flints of ice on fire
through the Lord’s atmosphere.

His unrivaled reconciling, radical gospel calling
from a feed trough in our deep night.

Swaddling rags giving way to celestial robes; 
giving birth to hope of hope.

There is none apart from You.
  
Apart from You all is a vaporous nothing;
light and shadow, ebb and flow.

O come Emmanuel, teach me your ways,  
lead me down your paths I pray.

Your voice, “Do you love me? Do you love me?”
over the molting mists of the fields.