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Linda Parsons: Two Poems for Christmas
LIGHT BEGETS LIGHT
Decorations up, some tattered with time,
we huddle for a selfie haloed by tinsel
and Moravian stars. I never know where
to look, I confess to my oldest granddaughter.
She says, Look at the light and snaps us
being all merry and bright.
Bright and merry, at least for the camera,
the light hasn’t always been easy to find—
haloed fires of childhood, my walk
on coals to the marriage pyre, parents
passed to flame and ash. All have sparked
the change ahead, all have lit the path.
That light ahead, it followed me home,
the afterlife while yet alive: clothespin angels
tucked in my father’s tallest fir, Santa’s
boots chewed by mice, snowflakes crocheted
by Aunt Barbara—your great-great,
I tell my granddaughters.
My granddaughters, it’s in all you remember
to pack and carry. The distance trails in glitter
even as I pass to sepia, the names I retell
in winter’s descent, boxes to again unpack.
Look, look! The shine returns in the east foretold,
these starry ornaments to wish on and hold.
~~
TERRA NOSTRA, TERRA MIA
All ground is ancient, my friend says
as we travel the boot heel of Italia: the Adriatic’s
Puglia region. Ostuni, called The White City,
draws tourists for the view, the whitewashed grottos,
little ears of orecchiette with burrata. Centuries
roll off the tongue—Locorotondo, Monopoli—
all the way back to the Norman conquest, land
surely more ancient than our Tennessee gardens.
We all plant our feet somewhere, soil where time
has its rainy, droughty way. My red clay surely kin
to the olive groves tended under Bethlehem’s star,
the march to Calvary. We all fall on our knees
to worship what darkens our nails, awed by what
feeds heart and table, our good old redemption.
~~~
Poet, playwright, essayist, and editor, Linda Parsons is published in such journals as The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, Terrain, The Chattahoochee Review, and Shenandoah. Her sixth collection is Valediction: Poems and Prose (Madville, 2023). Five of her plays have been produced by Flying Anvil Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Copyright 2024 Linda Parsons
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Lovely poems! Especially these lines in “Light Begats Light”:
…The distance trails in glitter
even as I pass to sepia, the names I retell
in winter’s descent, boxes to again unpack.
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Such mastery here–thank you for these poems!
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I love Linda’s poems for their subtle music.
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Kid FaceTimed me opening presents 🥰
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This year, a tiny fake tree, no scent of pine, Tashi will get a bite of cheese. My son came over a couple weeks ago and put up some lights in front, but the natural Toyon berries did most of the outside decorating, and they will ferment and provide a feast for the Cedar Waxwings who will laugh and carry on. This morning, coffee, the neighbor’s Christmas Stollen warmed over, my old Tashi and I together on her chair, peering out the window at the goldfinches and perhaps the soft rabbit we saw last night. I imagine the grandchildren, beginning to rally from the flu, attacking presents under the tree. They will get grandma’s when their folks declare it safe, but I will miss our morning gluten-free cinnamon rolls, the settling back with family after chaos. As I think that thought, images of other places, more lethal chaos arrive unbidden, I cannot stuff them back and shame for my entitled “poor me” mixes with a wish to return to sleep.
Sorry, stream of consciousness. These things happen when I read poetry on my phone before starting my day.
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Thanks, Barbara! Merry Christmas.
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Merry Christmas and all the holidays to you
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Thanks for poems casting more light into the nooks and crannies of Christmas. Linda Parson’s phrase: “my walk on coals to the marriage pyre” halts me in the stunning wonder of it. “our good old redemption.” Also priceless.
Peace under a warm blanket tonight, to all who read these poems.
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Thanks, Jim. Your comments here have been a blessing.
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“We all fall on our knees
to worship what darkens our nails, awed by what
feeds heart and table, our good old redemption.”
I know red clay and that any evening when I have to turn garden soil from beneath my nails that I have had a good day; a day of promise.
A perfect final line.
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Yes!!!!
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