Christmas Joy

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Christmas Joy
by Larry Turner

The city streets, ablaze with Christmas light,
Reflect my joy, unable to compete.
My love is coming home to me tonight.

I feared you’d fall afoul of canceled flight,
Or ice and snow would bring your trip defeat
In city streets, ablaze with Christmas light.

Approaching where you’ll be, my heart grows tight.
I see you waiting there. I stop. We greet.

My love, I have you in my arms tonight.

We travel home, the world all dressed in white.
It’s great to have you near. In joy we meet
The city streets, ablaze with Christmas light

We round the bend. Our home comes into sight.
Delighting in your presence I repeat
My love is home, and in my arms tonight.

Through open door we enter. Turning right
We sit together, savoring the treat
Of Christmas tree, ablaze with colored light
My love is home, and in my arms tonight.

Larry Turner moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia in 2001 with his wife Donna after a career in physics teaching and research in Indiana, Ohio, England and 25 years at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago.

His new book of poetry Eden and Other Addresses has just been published by Infinity Publishing. His poems have appeared in many magazines including Kansas Quarterly and Spoon River Quarterly. Arbor Hill Press published his first book of poetry Stops on the Way to Eden and Beyond in 1992. He edited the anthology Riverside Reflections, published by Infinity in 2005.

Larry is a past president of the Illinois State Poetry Society and regional vice-president of the Poetry Society of Virginia.

Abiding in the Fields
by Larry Turner

Day by day, through the year
prompted by drought and rain, heat and cold
we moved our flocks from pasture to pasture.
Night by night, through the year
constellations traced the zodiac
in their trek around the pole star.

To us in the hills it made no difference who—
offspring of Maccabees or puppet of Rome—
sat on the throne, wore the priestly vestments.

We wouldn't live in the city if we could
amid crowds and noise
with no meaning for us.
Not that living in the hills was easy.
Some nights we told the old stories,
sang the old songs, but mostly
in exhaustion we did nothing
but watch stars circle
and year follow year without change.

Then the skies opened, angels sang,
we went to see the infant, and we knew:
In the way we care for our flocks
the way we work with one another
the way we revere the land
we take our part in the birth of a new world
throughout the earth and throughout the heavens.