Advent Madrigal

It’s a season of anticipation as UVA faculty poet Lisa Russ Spaar illustrates in her poem, “Advent Madrigal.” Ms. Spaar is Professor and Director of Creative Writing and Director, Area Program in Poetry Writing in the Department of English in the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia. Lifetime Learning is pleased to share the creative talents of UVA faculty poets during this holiday season.

Advent Madrigal

Is waiting . . . a narrative?
Can it be a way to live?

This usher moon, globular flashlight,
sketches the narrow aisle of night,

the lawn so liquored up, aglow,
I can see my crooked shadow

stretching all the way back to the
climacteric empty tomb, crux

of my belief & doubt.  Escape?  Now
there’s a story.  The treetops sough

& seize with it.  Could that be the point: the
earth gone static, iron.  Purloined?

Deck all useless wheels with ever-greens.
Bestrew the source, the O, the yet to be seen.

                                   Lisa Russ Spaar