Advent Sonnet IV

I want to stroll with Advent slowly,
make my time saccharine, sweet —
to breathe deeply and behold the lowly
Savior in the dark of this winter retreat —
but there is great reaping to be done
with sermons and phone calls and meetings
and the harvest is white, absent the sun,
and the sacred is buried in season’s greetings
as the calendar fills to the tip of the brim
and I lament my place in the station.
My eye are frantic, looking for him,
begging a pause of the Hope of the nations —
then I recall that mangers, battered and worn,
are the only places the Son will be born.