The Night Before the Night Before

The night before the night before Christmas

Seems already here at noon today

What with a vast low pressure system’s brow

Pressed right down over rain-wet roofs on which

An aggregate of fallen branches stir

The symmetry of shingles on our roof.

Absent all white except some litter of

S-shaped particles of foam blown from a

Walmart bag. Today is trash day here and

Dark hulks of jumbled cans, some upside down,

Mark, with green recycling boxes, that things

Are all quite, quite, quite quotidian still.

Nevertheless, on this the day before

The night before, invisibly but still there

Nonetheless, we feel the season’s presence

In the air—not the humid atmosphere

But instead the spirit’s breath which knows that

Christ’s birth on this our earth is very near.