Advent I: Against snowy weather and temptations

Isabelle Gross

Excita, quǽsumus, Dōmine, potēntiam tuam, et veni: ut ab imminēntibus peccatōrum nostrōrum perīculis, te mereāmur protegēnte ēripi, te 

liberānte salvāri…

- Collect for the first Sunday of Advent (1962) 

my car is filled with clean laundry: 

sweaters and scarves and wool socks 

and snacks and books and blankets 

and my sister is asleep beside me.

the snowflakes fall gently on my windshield. 

i drive carefully through the cold and damp, 

Simon and Garfunkel on the speakers 

i admire the white beauty 

and listen to the sound of silence. 

so much tension and peace in this one moment. 

between my cautious Christmas hope 

and natural perpetual pessimism, 

between the peace of the soft snowflakes 

and the threatening danger of the slick road. 

and for a moment i am frozen in time. 

and the snowflakes continue to shroud 

the brown dead things 

and keep silence for the leaves that color has left 

and i am moving forward, slowly. 

and i pray for safe travels:

Come, into the silence and the cold. Come, into 

the death and dying all around. Come deliver me

from slipping. 

Stir up Thy might and come.