by Nona Blyth Cloud
Wabi–sabi (侘寂) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.”
Rust, asymmetric shapes, age lines — life’s textures.
So many people feel pressure to make the holidays “perfect.” For a lot of Americans, it may be the only time we see our far-flung family members or long-time friends, so we make unreasonable demands on ourselves to make the time together “special” — frantically planning everything down to the last detail, when all that really matters is being together, not what we do or how much we eat.
So here are some poems about unexpected events or sudden insights at Christmas, the impermanent imperfections of the season that we find, years later, are the very things that make these days memorable and beautiful.
“Your Luck Is About To Change”
(A fortune cookie)by Susan Elizabeth Howe
Ominous inscrutable Chinese news
to get just before Christmas,
considering my reasonable health,
marriage spicy as moo-goo-gai-pan,
career running like a not-too-old Chevrolet.
Not bad, considering what can go wrong:
the bony finger of Uncle Sam
might point out my husband,
my own national guard,
and set him in Afghanistan;
my boss could take a personal interest;
the pain in my left knee could spread to my right.
Still, as the old year tips into the new,
I insist on the infant hope, gooing and kicking
his legs in the air. I won’t give in
to the dark, the sub-zero weather, the fog,
or even the neighbors’ Nativity.
Their four-year-old has arranged
his whole legion of dinosaurs
so they, too, worship the child,
joining the cow and sheep. Or else,
ultimate mortals, they’ve come to eat
ox and camel, Mary and Joseph,
then savor the newborn babe.
Susan Elizabeth Howe has published
two poetry collections: Salt and Stone Spirits
Christmas Sparrow
by Billy Collins
The first thing I heard this morning
was a soft, insistent rustle,
the rapid flapping of wings
against glass as it turned out,a small bird rioting
in the frame of a high window,
trying to hurl itself through
the enigma of transparency into the spacious light.A noise in the throat of the cat
hunkered on the rug
told me how the bird had gotten inside,
carried in the cold night
through the flap in a basement door,
and later released from the soft clench of teeth.Up on a chair, I trapped its pulsations
in a small towel and carried it to the door,
so weightless it seemed
to have vanished into the nest of cloth.But outside, it burst
from my uncupped hands into its element,
dipping over the dormant garden
in a spasm of wingbeats
and disappearing over a tall row of hemlocks.Still, for the rest of the day,
I could feel its wild thrumming
against my palms whenever I thought
about the hours the bird must have spent
pent in the shadows of that room,
hidden in the spiky branches
of our decorated tree, breathing there
among metallic angels, ceramic apples, stars of yarn,its eyes open, like mine as I lie here tonight
picturing this rare, lucky sparrow
tucked into a holly bush now,
a light snow tumbling through the windless dark.
Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate (2001-03),
has published many poetry collections,
including The Art of Drowning, Nine Horses
and Questions About Angels.
Private schools don’t have hall passes since clients pay a larger proportion of the bills, rationalized as “student-teacher (minus administrator) ratio”. This is the covert meaning of the competitive wealth generated by trickle-down neoliberalism. Not to be confused with port-a-potty libertarianism.
As part of my continuing 
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