Prepare the Way
Out of season,
A yellow flower blooms
Among the dry leaves.
A crimson fire saturates
The evening sky.
An alien mass
Takes root in the brain
Of a good and faithful friend.
All around us
We seek meaning among the mysteries,
Look for portents, signs
To help us prepare for all that lies ahead
For good or ill:
A change of fortune,
An unexpected blessing or curse,
Or perhaps some awful doom
Beyond our imagining.
Long ago they came
To the fiery Baptist,
Wild and windblown,
As if his flashing eyes discerned
Some path or promise they could grasp.
We, too, seek prophets,
Sift through signs
--Silly, hopeful, mysterious—
To give us sense and sight..
Or maybe only this:
To help us glimpse the sandaled one
Who comes, who comes.
WILDERNESS
I walk through the familiar woods,
Crossing a spine of granite ledge
To the shoulder of a hill.
A hawk circles overhead,
And far below a gray finger of water
Circles out of sight.
I find comfort in this place,
Where no human voice intrudes.
It is the comfort of silence,
Sanctified by a breath of wind
And the smell of earth and rain,
Where time and life are measured
On a clock of sun and stars
And a calendar of seasons.
There is a holy voice here,
And a space to hear the voice
Of my own heart.
Here I can walk into the other wildness,
The brambled hollows of my past,
The overgrown paths littered
With regrets and disappointments,
Sorrows and fears.
This is not a journey I desire,
But it is where I must go
To prepare the way of the Lord.
The hawk cries,
And maybe there is glory
To be discovered this gray day,
A voice of comfort, even joy,
On this Advent morning.
COMING
Advent.
This new year begins
In silence,
No fireworks, no toasts,
No whoop-de-do at all.
It is the silence
That carries us
Into the whispered morning
Of a new day,
A new season.
This time will not be
All of my own making.
It will be formed
By what is coming:
The unexpected meeting,
The bent plans,
The stranger in the path.
The jays in the swamp maple chatter,
Interrupting the quiet of my waking.
They see something ahead
From their treetop perch,
And sing.
--Timothy Haut
