Pexels / Ryutaro Tsukata

little tree 

little silent Christmas tree

you are so little

you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest

and were you very sorry to come away?

see          i will comfort you

because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark

and hug you safe and tight

just as your mother would,

only don’t be afraid

look          the spangles

that sleep all the year in a dark box

dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,

the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms

and i’ll give them all to you to hold

every finger shall have its ring 

and there won’t be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you’re quite dressed

you’ll stand in the window for everyone to see

and how they’ll stare!

oh but you’ll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands

and looking up at our beautiful tree

we’ll dance and sing

“Noel Noel”

Christmas Poem

from spiralling ecstatically this

proud nowhere of earth’s most prodigious night

blossoms a newborn babe:around him,eyes

— gifted with ever keener appetite

than mere unmiracle can quite appease —

humbly in their imagined bodies kneel

(over time space doom dream while floats the whole

perhapsless mystery of paradise)

mind without soul may blast some universe

to might have been,and stop ten thousand stars

but not one heartbeat of this child;nor shall

even prevail a million questionings

against the silence of his mother’s smile

— whose only secret all creation sings

E.E. Cummings

e. e. Cummings (1894-1962) was an American poet and, like Robert Frost, one of the most-read American poets of the 20th century. He also worked as a painter, essayist and playwright (his most popular play is Santa Claus: A Morality). Cummings’ poems are also perhaps some of the most immediately recognizable to readers; except for some early material, most of his work is defined by idiosyncratic syntax and lower-case spellings for even proper nouns. An early proponent of modernist poetry, Cummings wrote in traditional forms (such as the sonnet “Christmas Poem”) and in free verse (“little tree”), but always with the typographical eccentricities that in part defined his style as wholly unique.