A plague of grace
My Christmas poem for 2024
Each year, in the lead up to Christmas, I write a poem about the season. It’s become a meaningful part of my writing life year over year.
This year I wrote the poem in the midst of an epic snow storm, that fell upon us in south western Ontario. Shutting down schools, closing highways, and burying our world in white.
I’m amazed at how quickly the world can change, at the lavish excess of grace, and how the natural world sometimes is a window through which we can see another.
Merry Christmas to you and yours. Mind your lower back as you clear away all that fallen grace.
~ AK
A plague of grace
The snow fell for days.
Is this how Pharaoh felt
as dust covered his land
when black flies descended from the cloud of ash
Aaron threw in the air?
These drifts, as outlandish as frogs
heaped on roads, against doorframes
white sheets covering
lakes, sloughs like blood on the Nile.
Oversized, inflated lawn ornaments
swarm front yards like too many locust
a dangerous lure
for children, perhaps
the heart’s concession
to what the season holds:
Clouds that pour out intricately pattered
snowflakes with one thousand different
shapes, carols in store aisles. Old church ladies who
make too sweet apple cider
Christmas lights that poke holes in
the gloom and a Heaven that sends forth
a Saviour.
The snow that has freshly
fallen is above the boot. The lonely
neighbour watches grown men trudge down the street
from her window, observes how they
float through the world without ankles.
This afternoon they will cancel meetings
make snow angels on the ground
laugh too loudly with their
children.
Winter, like God’s grace, is excess
a plague of exuberance.
