Advent Madrigal

Written by Lisa Russ Spaar, Horace W. Goldsmith Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Creative Writing Program, Dept. of English, College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

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