Gratitude in Dark December

There's nothing more gratifying for a writer, I suppose, than to be read -- and to have a person or two in some way moved by the reading.  A couple of years ago, I penned "In Dark December" which has been published here and there in print and on line, and which I've read at several events.  Well -- people seem to like it and it's been spreading on the internet and by emails and now I get references to the piece from far and wide. Thanks to friend Kris Thacher for the above photo, showing the poem posted on the Poetry Pole on Candelaria Road in Albuquerque, New Mexico; a far piece from my digs in Northeast Wisconsin.  Sometimes, I think, a piece of writing can be bigger than its author, and that's certainly how I feel about this poem.  Grateful to have had my pen on paper -- my hook in the water -- when this one came swimming by.  Grateful, too, for the friends, new and old, who have helped keep this alive.    ~ RM

In Dark December

by Ralph Murre

Whatever you believe,

whatever you do not,

there are sacred rites

you must perform

in dark December.

Do this for me:

Pull together

the kitchen table,

the folding table,

and that odd half-oval

usually covered

with bills and broken pencils

and red ink.

Pull together family and friends,

cool cats and stray dogs alike.

Turn off everything

except colored lights,

the roaster,

the toaster, the stove.

Cook.  Bake.  Eat.

Yes, even the fruitcake.

Eat, crowded around

those assembled tables

with mismatched chairs.

Reach so far

in your sharing

that you hold the sun

in one hand,

the stars in the other,

and no one between is hungry.

Now walk together,

talk together,

be together

on these darkest nights.

Give and forgive.

Light candles and ring bells.

Sing the old songs.

Tell the old stories

one more time,

leaving nothing out,

leaving no one out

in the long night,

leaving nothing wrong

that you can make right.

~ first published in Peninsula Pulse