Lay for the Day 24th December

Dreaming of a white Christmas.

From the book of Praises:

93. Of a Hermit

Pines bowed, their branches bowed
by glistering pelts of snow
thick as folded ermine,
the bark’s rugosities
capped and speckled with ice,

a rough-clothed man blunders
between them, brushing limbs
whose loads with a dry crack
fall, pitting the fresh drifts
they come drumming down on.

The deep, unbitten green
needles sway up and back,
their live sheen touched by last,
long red of winter’s ray.

John Gibbens
from Collected Poems

The Lay Reader: an archive of the poetic calendar