Advent Again – day 22

“Do not be afraid to…”

 

“Hymn” by A.R. Ammons

I know if I find you I will have to leave the earth

and go on out

     over the sea marshes and the brant in bays

and over the hills of tall hickory

and over the crater lakes and canyons

and on up through the spheres of diminishing air

past the blackset noctilucent clouds

           where one wants to stop and look

way past all the light diffusions and bombardments

up farther than the loss of sight

    into the unseasonal undifferentiated empty stark

 

And I know if I find you I will have to stay with the earth

inspecting with thin tools and ground eyes

trusting the microvilli sporangia and simplest

     coelenterates

and praying for a nerve cell

with all the soul of my chemical reactions

and going right on down where the eye sees only traces

 

You are everywhere partial and entire

You are on the inside of everything and on the outside

forest-1890-cezanne

Forest (1890) by Paul Cezanne

 

I walk down the path down the hill where the sweetgum

has begun to ooze spring sap at the cut

and I see how the bark cracks and winds like no other bark

chasmal to my ant-soul running up and down

and if I find you I must go out deep into your

    far resolutions

and if I find you I must stay here with the separate leaves

Advent Reflection – Day 6

Christmas Green

Just now the earth recalls His stunning visitation.  Now
the earth and scattered habitants attend to what is possible: that He
of a morning entered this, our meagered circumstance, and so
relit the fuse igniting life in them, igniting life in all the dim
surround.  And look, the earth adopts a kindly affect.  Look,
we almost see our long estrangement from it overcome.
The air is scented with the prayer of pines, the earth is softened
for our brief embrace, the fuse continues bearing to all elements
a curative despite the grave, and here within our winter this,
the rising pulse, bears still the promise of our quickening.

– Scott Cairns in Compass of Affection: Poems New and Selected

This photograph was taken by Jim Peaco of the National Park Service 10 years after the 1988 Yellowstone fires  Lodgepole pine forests reestablish themselves amongst standing dead trees.