I’m posting a poem I wrote last winter, because today’s O Antiphon leading up to Christmas is “O Oriens” which means O Dayspring. This one was published in Lyrical Iowa 2021.

Incarnation at Dawn

The dark tendrils of the old maple
are framed as a detail within the
angles of the sunroom window.
The blue beyond them is a canvas
light-years deep.
Such is the texture of everything we see,
flat in the glance,
limitless on closer inspection.

Today the image draws my attention
to the groundedness and the reaching,
the tension of incarnation.  Altogether here
while reaching, always drawing life
from both dimensions

and, I suppose, more than the two
but something deeper still, as seen now
by the lightening of the sky.
The dimensions of the branches
come into focus, rich-textured.
Word made flesh in my backyard.