SAINT JULIAN PRESS

 

DAVID BRENDAN HOPES ~ POET

 

 

CHRISTMAS MORNING

 

 

The bare ground shows its bones,

the curved, hard down, the female hills,

the creeks raw as new cuts in the valleys.

Rain for Christmas. I go walking.

Gray, the land, like a whale's back

studded with spears, the bare trees.

Dry, the honey of deceit in the lily's throat,

honey of generation in the strangle-vine;

rose dead in her intricacies.

Arrayed on the forest floor are Christmas fern,                     

partridge berry, Eve-color still, enduring green.

Birdless, this silence.

They have twittered off to Bethlehem.

Christmas morning the village bells

toll me as I walk.

Who's there? ask the bareness,

     the bright Eve berries.

 I answer, "A poet, Christmas morning."

 Ease, they whisper, let the line.

      Give us slack.  

 

 

 

PENIEL

 

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