My brother and his wife welcomed into their lives a baby girl mere days before Thanksgiving. If ever there was an occasion to give thanks, this was it. I wrote this poem—in a parking lot, hundreds of miles away, on the eve of her birth—for the little soul whose presence has already blessed our family with so much light, and for myself, as a reminder: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (New International Version, Matt. 6.21).
Winter’s tree with branches bare,
Retracting from a splendor,
Into slumber and thin air—
The coup complete by mid-November.
Night and shadow victors both,
Their reign is but a pregnant pause
In God’s eternal will to growth,
Take spring, his gift, and love, his cause.
Hoarding life until high time
To shudder, sanctify, give birth—
Begins again to pantomime
The fearless jig that spins the earth,
And welcomes in from out the cold
A foil for a calloused heart,
Delivered into crease and fold,
Conjoining what was once apart.
Impolitic 