Frost at Advent ~ a poem for Celtic Advent Day 17

Image: Jacqueline Durban 

Continuing the theme of hope, here is a beautiful poem written only yesterday by my Kent Christian Peace Activist sister in solidarity, Holly Elsie. Such a tender and fragile-strong poem of finding peace and hope in the smallest, most intricate, and yet most ordinary, of things. This is where we find the Beloved.

Frost at Advent 

Unfurling ferns of frost on the window:
The first sign of you in the morning.
Beyond, hoarfrost on fenceposts and fields -
All exposed things are changed.
And I know that winter
Is yours as much as spring.
If I could wait and watch
the slow growing then thawing
of frost on the window,
I would learn something of peace.
For hope is a perennial shoot rooted deep,
And I believe I shall see the goodness
of the Lord in the land of the living.
If I could sit patiently, faithfully,
Watching your microscopic work
Transform the pane,
I might glimpse that which
Could be...
And shall be.

Holly Elsie, December 2019.