DPF / Bryant

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For frozen mist and wavering flakes, from poetryfoundation.org.

from The Snow-Shower / by William Cullen Bryant

Here delicate snow-stars, out of the cloud,
   Come floating downward in airy play,
Like spangles dropped from the glistening crowd
   That whiten by night the milky way

DPF / Wiman

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For 15-degree football games and other ways to witness winter, from poetryfoundation.org.

from This Inwardness, This Ice / by Christian Wiman, b. 1966

This inwardness, this ice,
this wide boreal whiteness

DPF / Bentley

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For parents, teachers, and parent-teachers, and anyone who teaches anyone any one valuable thing, from poetryfoundation.org.

from On Education / by Elizabeth Bentley, December 1789

Point out betimes the course they should pursue;
Then with redoubled pleasure shall you view
Their reason strengthen as their years increase,

DPF / Coleridge

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What? No Coleridge? This is the four-day countdown to end the run of no repeats. Beginning 1/1/16, I will no longer seek a new poet each day, but will pull favorite fragments willy nilly; I think I will have made it through two years of no individual poet repeats, except for Christmas Eve’s Moore and the days we lost Tate and Strand. This one’s for the last week of my favorite month, from poetryfoundation.org.

from Fragment 3: Come, come thou bleak December / by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!

DPF / Violi

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For bent trees flies and bees, from poetryfoundation.org.

from Resolution / by Paul Violi (1944-2011)

Whereas the porch screen sags from
the weight of flowers (impatiens) that grew
against it, then piles of wet leaves,
then drifted snow; and

 

Whereas, now rolled like absence in its
drooping length, a dim gold wave,
sundown’s last, cast across a sea of clouds
and the floating year, almost reaches
the legs of the low-slung chair

DPF / Chasar

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For Gabriellan trumpets and beaches on Christmas Day, from poetryfoundation.org.

from Conches on Christmas / by Mike Chasar

Diluvian, draggled and derelict posse, this
barnacled pod so pales
next to everything we hear of red tides and pilot whales
that a word like “drama” makes me sound remiss

 

except that there
was a kind of littoral drama in the way the shells
silently, sans the heraldry of bells,
neatly, sans an astrological affair,

 

and swiftly, sans a multitude of feet, flat-out arrived—
an encrusted school of twenty-four
Gabriellan trumpets at my beach house door

DPF / Moore

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An essential repeat, from poetryfoundation.org. Merry day.

from A Visit from St. Nicholas / by Clement Clarke Moore

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there

DPF / de la Mare

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For the season and its greenery, from poetryfoundation.org.

from Mistletoe / by Walter de la Mare

Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
One last candle burning low,
All the sleepy dancers gone,
Just one candle burning on,
Shadows lurking everywhere:
Some one came, and kissed me there.

DPF / Anonymous

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For the 9th day of Christmas, maybe, if this is how it’s counted, from poetryfoundation.org. And, a happy belated Hanukkah, and a happy upcoming Kwanzaa!

from The Twelve Days of Christmas / by Anonymous

The ninth day of Christmas,
My true love sent to me
Nine drummers drumming,
Eight maids a-milking,
Seven swans a-swimming,
Six geese a-laying,
Five gold rings,
Four colly birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree.

DPF / Williams

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For sugar and mysteries, from poetryfoundation.org.

from To Mrs. K_____, On Her Sending Me an English Christmas Plum-Cake at Paris / by Helena Maria Williams (1761-1827)

For magic surely lurks in this,
A cake that tells of vanished bliss;