advent Hope

​Advent, first day,
on a morning walk in the frigid predawn silence,
across the empty park bare tree limbs pierce a sky
blazing white with the fires of heaven.
I read my pulse to keep time by their flames.
 
I strain to breach, with a finger, the dark expanse
to their impossible reaches, but my feet, my mind,
remain wedded to this ground, holding me
like a pledge to my birth, to this world.
 
How can I hold in my hand even one particle
of this distant, all-consuming bliss?
 
One fire, one brighter than the rest, red or orange,
perhaps a planet, loiters on the western bend of the world.
One red light I can hold on to with fixed gaze,
one warm body to hold me
 
until daylight draws near, all other lights gone
but this one fire of heaven. It remains, for a moment,
at the fragile far edge of night, a promise
that I am held in the dark and not alone.

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