Advent: 2020 (Blank Verse Version)

Winter's name: two staccato syllables That are echoless; like a broken drum. Winter is the bare- bones of a season: When life's vivid colours are extinguished. The year's flesh is flayed in its harsh weather. It turns memory into nostalgia. All it offers are tenebrous shadows. Time is frozen in its sterile kingdom. Hope is shrouded in its long, bitter nights. Yet winter the cruel enslaver, also Begets Time the redeemer; the saviour: When the dormant Word awakens and then Brightens into meaning via Advent. It's arrival is winter's nemesis. Like dew that falls upon crisp, frosted grass, The muted, fragile, yet knowing sunlight Of the Christ child's birth will flicker gently Through the frayed, black, leafless branches of trees To break malignant winter's sullen spell And revive the withered sinews of earth.