Poems for the Christmas Season

Kim Fahner teaches English and history at Marymount Academy in Sudbury,
Ontario.

A family project of sorts, this is a collection of poems written by
Robert Hawkes and illustrated by his wife, Peggy, and their son, Todd.
Encompassing 40 years of this family’s Christmas celebrations, the
poems supply typical Christmas imagery, with lights and trees and the
like. Some pieces, however, rise above traditional imagery to send out
shivers of meaning. In “That Night,” Hawkes writes, “Near
Jerusalem / there is a tree / that will one day / become a Cross,”
forming a lovely circular path in the reader’s mind. There are
beginnings and there are endings, but there is definitely a sense of
spiritual destiny.

In “Message,” the poet imagines what Mary might have felt upon
conceiving Jesus: “As gently / as dandelion seeds fall / to the
ground, // so gently the seed entered my womb. // At first / His son
swam in me / with fingerling force. // Then later on / he kicked me / as
if to say: // ‘Please hurry. / I’ve so much / to do.’ ” Those
five sharp stanzas convey a sense of intensity, of a gathering spiritual
storm that has a purpose and a specified time frame in which to complete
certain tasks.

Other poems of note include “Of Heavenly Bodies,” “Sign,”
“Bringing Back the Child,” and “Brothers and Sisters of Eons
Ago.” All of these poems have lines and images that, as Hawkes himself
conveys in “Bringing Back the Child,” contain magical elements. The
key issue, though, is whether readers will go beyond the Christmas tree
cover and the bland title to search out the little gems within. For
some, the emphasis on the seasonal may alienate rather than entice.