Hello. I'm Donn Taylor, here again with comments on writing poetry. But this month, in honor of Christmas, I'm taking a break from describing the elements that make good poetry. Instead, I'm inviting you to join in celebrating the birth of our Lord with two of my poems (one negative, one positive) that are quite different from the usual Christmas poems. See what you think and leave a comment if you choose.

                THE UNEPHIPHANY (© 1999)

            They saw no star and heard no angels sing.
            For them no light nor song, but only stale
            Continuum. Without awakening,
            They slept content that ancient night prevail.
            Unheard, by them, the knocking at the door;
            Unseen, the way, the truth, the life. For them
            The dead world dragged dead weight to nothing more
            Than what had always been, a cosmos dim
            In shadowed second causes, naught beyond.
            Their kinsmen live today, and still they see
            No star and hear no song and feel no bond.
            For them, perpetual unephiphany—
                For eyes and ears cannot perform their part
                Without the willing opening of the heart.
           

                  First Christmas (© 2011)

            All things came into being through Him….
            And  the Word became flesh….
                        John 1:3,14 (NAS)

            This mind, this vastness far beyond our ken,
            This majesty transcending comprehension,
            This force that formed the fury of star heat
            And interplanetary cold, this power
            That shaped the suns and placed them in the sky,
            Assigned to each a lifespan and a time
            For each to die—This vast immensity
            Of thought, eternal goodness and of power,
            And yet of love, on this one sacred day
            Compressed into the body of a child
            His own divinity, to suffer pain and death
            That we, the undeserving, might receive,
            By loving Him, this gift, the privilege
            Through all eternity to worship Him.

    Merry Christmas to everyone. In January we'll return to explaining structures that allow poetry to speak with the requisite "higher voltage."