Advent Light

by Ann Boaden

This too he knows:
how brittle our stars,
how tremulous our candles,
how bitter the ash
when fires untended go out.
The dark he knows
that can—so quickly—knife day’s center;
knows our fear and our need
for those little lights,
for the matches we strike,
fingers fumbling,
to pattern night;
and so if we attend to
homefires rather than to
one more star
(however large)
he knows
it is our yearning for light
and our belief in darkness,
knows
it is for this he came.