Creche: Epiphany

As the holiday season comes to a close, the journey continues. Lifetime Learning shares the final poem in a seasonal series by Lisa Russ Spaar: “Creche: Epiphany.” 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.

Creche:  Epiphany

                                           for Sydney Hall Blair, 1949-2016

What’s a gift if not the heart’s envoi, a cut, a
wrap, a species of we’re done here, it’s over,
concluded, kaput—fiction’s ploy.
In trow:  no end to things, to things undone,

en-voy, in via, on the way is what we always
are, even those with bodies blazed to ash gray
as this new day, a little red touching hills,
roofs

of houses where strangers live. The boxwood on the
mantle brittles. Yet they travel, the kings with what
they have to give, which, all things granted, is a
gracious little,

just the truth of trust & move & wend, for
which, despite the rhyme, there is no end.

                             Lisa Russ Spaar