Advent

by Mary Jo Salter

Wind whistling, as it does

in winter, and I think

nothing of it until

it snaps a shutter off

her bedroom window, spins

it over the roof and down

to crash on the deck in back,

like something out of Oz.

We look up, stunned—then glad

to be safe and have a story,

characters in a fable

we only half-believe.

Look, in my surprise

I somehow split a wall,

the last one in the house

we’re making of gingerbread.

We’ll have to improvise:

prop the two halves forward

like an open double door

and with a tube of icing

cement them to the floor.

Five days until Christmas,

and the house cannot be closed.

When she peers into the cold

interior we’ve exposed,

she half-expects to find

three magi in the manger,

a mother and her child.

She half-expects to read

on tablets of gingerbread

a line or two of Scripture,

as she has every morning

inside a dated shutter

on her Advent calendar.

She takes it from the mantel

and coaxes one fingertip

under the perforation,

as if her future hinges

on not tearing off the flap

under which a thumbnail picture

by Raphael or Giorgione,

Hans Memling or David

of apses, niches, archways,

cradles a smaller scene

of a mother and her child,

of the lidded jewel-box

of Mary’s downcast eyes.

Flee into Egypt, cries

the angel of the Lord

to Joseph in a dream,

for Herod will seek the young

child to destroy him. While

she works to tile the roof

with shingled peppermints,

I wash my sugared hands

and step out to the deck

to lug the shutter in,

a page tom from a book

still blank for the two of us,

a mother and her child.

Mary Jo Salter, “Advent” from Open Shutters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003). Copyright © 2003 by Mary Jo Salter.