Poetry Friday: Advent, by Thomas Merton

I love the fresh start of Advent.

Liturgically, we're in a new year, full of possibilities.

This is the time for "New Year's Resolutions." Advent -- a season pregnant with hope and promise, with anticipation, and with the fear and trembling of working out our salvation -- is the perfect time to assess our spiritual lives.

The liturgical calendar is such a gift. "Time falls like manna at the corners of the wintry earth," as Fr. Merton says.


Today, a beautiful poem from a favorite:

Advent

by Thomas Merton

Charm with your stainlessness these winter nights,

Skies, and be perfect! Fly, vivider in the fiery dark, you quiet meteors,

And disappear.

You moon, be slow to go down,

This is your full!

The four white roads make off in silence

Towards the four parts of the starry universe.

Time falls like manna at the corners of the wintry earth.

We have become more humble than the rocks,

More wakeful than the patient hills.

(Read the whole poem here.)

*****

The round up today is at Random Noodling.