Advent Calendar Reflection

    Advent Calendar

    He will come like last leaf’s fall.

    One night when the November wind

    has flayed the trees to bone, and earth

    wakes choking on the mould,

    the soft shroud’s folding.

    He will come like frost.

    One morning when the shrinking earth

    opens on mist, to find itself

    arrested in the net

    of alien, sword-set beauty.

    He will come like dark.

    One evening when the bursting red

    December sun draws up the sheet

    and penny-masks its eye to yield

    the star-snowed fields of sky.

    He will come, will come,

    will come like crying in the night,

    like blood, like breaking,

    as the earth writhes to toss him free.

    He will come like child.

    Rowan Williams