Wrap this

Now the Christmas guests are gone.
At the table where they sat
a smudge of sauce, crumbs of bread.
Out the window, branches of natal plum,
the drip drip of rain on shiny oval leaves,
treacherous thorns; a single pure-white
bloom, five-petaled star: birth from blood.

A college choir from long ago
sings, "all is calm, all is bright."
The tiny tree lights-red, gold,
and green-curtain window panes
and in the air, where all is bare,
the lights take flight, string leafless
limbs, grey misty night.

Wrap this.

This poem originally appeared in The Cresset and reprinted from Carved Like Runes, with permission of Lutheran University Press .

Read the story behind this "Reflection."