Sounding the Seasons
Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year
‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.’
The light that left its kindling long before
the stars were named has found our threshold now,
and stoops to cross the worn and waiting floor
where kings unburden gold and bend the brow.
We did not climb to find it; it came down,
outpacing every wise and weary mile,
to wear our dark as if it were a crown
and turn the long midwinter to a smile.
So let me set no lantern of my own
against a sun that asks no help to shine,
but only keep the door, and having known
the cold, make room, and call the warmth divine.
For light is not a thing that we attain —
it is the guest that comes, and comes again.
a calendar you can enter wherever the year has brought you
A sequence written one sonnet at a time, across the turning of a single year, and given away week by week before it was ever a book.
