A Christmas Song by Norman Williams

It's been a long, long time since I've posted. If you have any awareness of time, you know this. I won't bother you with excuses but lately wedding planning, applying to school, and work has taken precedence over poetry and blogging. However, the holiday season always re-energizes me with the hope that I am more talented than I give myself credit for the other 11 months of the year and yes, I can do it all. It's a bit of a disillusioned state fueled by sugar cookies and eggnog but let's run with it and see if I can keep to my own motto this holiday season and make time for poetry. We'll start off with this incredible poem by Norman Williams. I won't say much on it other than I'm mesmerized by how cold it and uneasy it leaves me. I love the juxtaposition of warm fuzzy Christmas songs (which aren't that warm and fuzzy on closer look) and then the stark, haunting images he lays out. Let yourself digest this poem at your own pace. Enjoy!

A Christmas Song
By Norman Williams

                    Christmas is coming. The goose is getting fat
                    Please put a penny in the old man’s hat.
                    If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do.
                    If you haven’t got a ha’penny, Gold bless you.

Tonight the wide, wet flakes of snow
Drift down like Christmas suicides,
Layering the eaves and boughs until
The landscape seems transformed, as from
A night of talk or love. I’ve come
From cankered ports and railroad hubs
To winter in a northern state:
Three months of wind and little light.
Wood split, flue cleaned, and ashes hauled,
I am now proof against the cold
And make a place before the stove.
Mired fast in middle age, possessed
Of staved-in barn and brambled lot,
I think of that fierce-minded woman
Whom I loved, painting in a small,
Unheated room, or of a friend,
Sharp-ribbed from poverty, who framed
And fitted out his house by hand
And writes each night by kerosene.
I think, that is, of others who
Withdrew from commerce and the world
To work for joy instead of gain.
O would that I could gather them
This Yuletide, and shower them with coins.

“A Christmas Song” from One Unblinking Eye by Norman Williams