Here’s another Christmas poem from Sweden. That day was so magical I just had to record it. The mentioned “Kent” is my dear heroic husband who’s bee out with the tractor shoveling snow, widening the road, chopping more wood, feeding the fire, keeping it going… in this record cold 2010 winter.
Christmas Day On And Around The Lake
Stora Härsjön.
For future generations
Of the English-speaking world, pronounce it
‘Hairshern’. One of God’s creations
Which they named Big Lake.
They’re skating up and down, zigzag, across.
From far three specks come into focus:
Man with dogs, parading toward a thin-iced dam.
Fear subsides – he’s local clan.
His kind knows every deep edged plane.
Kent is sweeping snow that dusts
The ice – in preparation for a skate.
I wait,
Brooklyn girl at window, while Viking
Feigns a shoe-drawn figure eight,
The outdoor rink scant meters from the house.
Enchanting bay-cum-pond embosomed in a wood.
We have a life uniquely good:
Biscuits in the oven; sitting, watching
While they brown, snatching, catching
Surfaces that rest on life this day,
A perfect way to view it.
The atmosphere is peerless
And I want it down for always.
Neighbor Hammer’s built a fire on the ice
Where Kent and Hammer’s sons
Build branch by branch, a flame, the highs
So bright, so red it could be called flamboyant (get it?)
As a day-short sky grows dusky and I watch,
A scone already spread with butter sampled
In my mouth.
©Christmas Day On And Around The Lake 96.1.31
Circling Round Nature; Swedish Book;
Arlene Corwin
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Arlene Corwin Poetry 