First week of Advent, 2017: a poem

                    An Advent wreath. Advent is the run-up to Christmas in liturgical churches

Years ago, I began what I hoped would be an annual happening: writing an Advent poem in the Octo Sequence pattern touted by Mary Harper Sowell, former president of Poets Roundtable of Arkansas. The online instructions are different from what Ms. Sowell used, that is, the fourth and fifth lines of the eight (octo) rhyme. Mine are rhymed. This poem described my life twenty-seven years ago in 1990.

ADVENT: THE COMING OF A CHILD

This Advent will be more serene
since I'm no longer organist--

no preludes, hymns or antiphons--

and time I spent in pressured haste

is now revered as private space.

No preludes, hymns or antiphons

since I'm no longer organist.

This Advent will be more serene.

The yuletide bustle will be less:

my school choir sang an autumn show,

releasing yet another night

for shopping with the family

or entertaining merrily.

Releasing yet another night,

my school choir sang an autumn show;

the yuletide bustle will be less.

Just when the season's simplified,

a grandson comes to live with me;

one curious, crawling eight-month-old.

(Did Mary want to rail and  rant

when Jesus tumped her favorite plant?)

One curious, crawling eight-month-old,

a grandson comes to live with me

just when the season's simplified.    

Published in variations, 1994

c 2017, PL

                                              The grandson, a few years later. He's now 27.