Unready

This is the bleak season
  of long nights and heartless cold,
  when all creatures lean
  toward some warming light.
December's sky hangs low,
  threatens some morning surprise--
  a haunted moon, a flitter of snow--
  and we move closer to the fire,
  slide sleepily under soft covers,
  waiting, waiting for a Spring.
We are unready, now,
  for unplanned adventure,
  turn back if our hands are required
  for some impossible mission.
But one night we see a star,
  or stir at a song
  somewhere in the winter silence.
It is the Advent yearning,
  the prophet's voice, the heart's unfolding.
There is a change in the air, in us.
We hoist the greens, light a candle,
  and pray again, and again,
  for your warming light:
"Come, Lord Jesus.”

-Timothy Haut, 2013