I just feel that we should be planting something,
pressing our fingers deep into the dark earth.
What, though? I can’t think of it –
I just feel that we should be planting something –
hopes – dreams – fairy lights?
I don’t know. Memories of sunshine?
I just feel that we should be planting something,
pressing our fingers deep into the dark earth.

I’m planning to spend December playing with triolets. This is for earthweal – a triolet of hoping and waiting.

After presents, after the meal, a walk
in the woods. Four adults and four children,
five to ten, reluctant to leave new toys behind.

Yet sticks and rocks whet imagination;
a stream crossing requires strategy;
spontaneous gamecraft arises outside a screen.

Young cousins conspire in creating fun,
play evanescent games of their own making,
making the gifts of the day seem a waste.

And to hear the youngest not just not complain,
but crest a rise and reflexively exclaim
over a snow-tinged scene, gratifies the adults

like the glimpse of a deer bounding away,
a fleeting feeling we would love to encounter
every ordinary day, as if each one were a gift.

A gift of a poem from Devon Marsh.

Devon Marsh served as a U.S. Navy pilot before a career in banking. The only course he ever dropped in college was an elective on poetry. His poems have appeared…

Advent is here. Its cello-wind notes
close the concert of the year. There are
flurries of snow at night, the tracks of a fox,
imprints of birds that vanished before dawn.
In this new world, the north-wind numbs
to the bone; a crimson-breasted robin plays alone.

This holly wreath is sharp, its leaves
lustrous. In the street, trussed-up walkers
stoop to and from the town’s limits
like hunched Lowry figures. Sun sets
polar blue in mid-afternoon.

It’s wonderful to have Matthew M. C. Smith kicking off this Advent Calendar of poetry.

Matthew M. C. Smith is a writer for Swansea. He loves winter Christmas and wants to write more festive poetry. Matthew has just edited Black Bough poetry’s Christmas and Winter edition, available on Amazon.

If you are looking for a book of poems that sums up this time of year, you should slip this into your stocking. It’s beautiful.

The beavers are beavering, dammit.
They are doing their thing: gnawing,
logging, building, damming. That’s
what they do. The beavers are beavering,
changing the landscape, creating pools
and slowing flows. Suddenly there
are dragonflies and clean water,
and the sharpened pencil stumps
of trees, because the beavers
are beavering, dammit, doing
their beaver thing. Beavering.

Beavers are a native British species, absent for 400 years, but now making a comeback. Down our way, they are (ironically) living on the River Otter. I know. They’ve been their since 2008, they are breeding, and they are making a difference both on the ecology of the river, and on local flood risk. All good. You can read more about it here, if you’re interested.

This is for Sherry at earthweal, who asks us to think about how eco-systems fit together.

iron earth so cold
sugar-touched rusted bracken
frosted grass splinters

reel towards the sun once more
draw light into darkened vales

foreshadowed healing
sacred flesh, innocent blood
divinity’s touch

belief and faith glow prayer-like
candle flame searing the night

grey stone archway frames
arrow-like finger of light
piercing this dark heart

©Freya Pickard 2020

Freya Pickard is the Author of The Kaerling series, an epic fantasy set in the world of Nirunen. She writes mainly fantasy tales, with some poetry thrown in. She has published 14 e-books and 6 paperbacks and finds her inspiration in the ocean, beautifully written books and vinyl music. She blogs athttps://dragonscaleclippings.wordpress.comandhttps://purehaiku.wordpress.com

It’s a joy to have Freya here. She curates beautiful collections of haiku on a regular basis – worth looking out for. If you enjoyed this tanka-haiku-reverse tankayou might like to check out her latest fantasy novel:

The Day of Weird…

After the snow was cleared, a new drift,
silent and silver, a spell in street light.
In crisp and cold, Christmas lights sparkle and through
doors, a stove is warm. In the dark of a room,
the halo-flame lights a face, the hunched figure
before a bright hearth. In crackle and smoke
images are kindled: the winter king’s burning ship;
the infant Christ, star-cradled; wild-eyed Saturn
and his stumbling train and deeper, an older time:
a forest in bitter mid-winter, where drums beat and
shadows rush and run. A heavy bough of holly prickles
and berries, sweet and bloody, are trampled underfoot .

A second poem from Matthew M C Smith. Matthew is a writer for Swansea. He loves winter Christmas and wants to write more festive poetry. Matthew has just edited Black Bough poetry’s Christmas and Winter edition, available on Amazon.

Matthew is also the driving force behind #TopTweetTuesday…

We fidget on settled sofas / tired of our tissue
blankets beckon in the hot-press
but we’re not cold enough / not yet compressed
the season’s turned / though not quite enough

A man in shorts / yesterday / in the graveyard
not even shivering on the freshly turned / since repressed earth

We talk of fairy lights / smaller tables
less chairs needed / more lights / candle light
lights that need batteries / lights that will never light
again / we fidget on the sofa / push hands down the sides
looking for all the things / we can no longer find

Mum hasn’t seen Frozen yet / maybe this year
to feel numb / conceal / for a time / to not feel
to let it go / let it melt away
as we fidget on the sofa / with our tissue

Next year / we’ll build…

Slippered feet on the stone hearth,
feeling the glow. Across our street,
the sky rested on rooftops, heavy,
full of a solstice harvest, hanging.
I was drowning in heat, like a Christmas
pudding drenched in brandy. Then I heard
a sizzle, a crunch, felt fire
licking my hair, hugging my back.
Before I was engulfed by fear
and flames, she threw me on the floor,
rolled me in the mat,
brandy-snapped and smoke-smothered.
Christmas morning, the clouds were bright and empty.
Among the presents was a dressing gown
as white as snow, folded neatly, ribbon-bowed, and labelled
one hundred percent brushed cotton.

Gaynor Kane lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She came to writing late in life, after finishing her
Open University BA(Hons) degree with a creative writing module in 2015. Mainly a writer of poetry,
she has had work published in journals and anthologies in the UK, Ireland and America…