Wilderness Advent | V E R S E and I M A G E

Posts Tagged ‘Wilderness Advent’

Saturday Share – Merry Christmas!

Posted in Imagery, tagged Bill Griffin, Christmas, David McCollum, family, imagery, NC Poets, poetry, Southern writing, Wilderness Advent on December 27, 2025| 2 Comments »

Saturday morning, after Christmas

If the Fates Allow

this could be the season we simply hang
together, forget parties, share a
cup of tea, perhaps those cookies with shining
sprinkles like you used to make, star
shaped, smell of baking better than feasting upon
any fancy cakes or puddings, the
presence enough, rooted and roosting – to fly highest
forgotten by two birds on a single bough.

Bill Griffin, for Christmas 2025

Thanks for this “Golden Shovel” poem goes to Sarah, Jeannine, Suzanne, Sophia, Kim, and Renee. We are the Tremont Cohort, the seven poets selected to attend the inaugural Tremont Writer’s Conference, 2023, in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We’re from Tennessee, Massachusetts, Ohio, and North Carolina, but for over two years we’ve managed to Zoom once a month to critique each other’s work and write something new together. MERRY CHRISTMAS, my friends! Thanks for the prompt. And deepest thanks to our inspired and inspiring teacher at the Tremont Conference, Frank X Walker.

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First a poem made from a song. Now a poem made into a song. In early 2018 conductor and composer David McCollum invited me to write a poem that could become the lyrics for a new anthem he wanted to perform for Christmas with the Elkin Community Chorus. We collaborated all summer, tweaks and adjustments to find the proper rhythm and cadence to fit the message. The Chorus premiered Wilderness Advent on December 2, 2018. Thanks for listening!

Wilderness Advent
(Pisgah Stranger)
Lyrics: Bill Griffin . . . . . . . . . . Music: David L. McCollum

Elkin Community Chorus 58th Annual Concert
December 2nd, 2018 – First Baptist Church, Elkin, North Carolina

Wilderness Advent
(Pisgah Stranger)

A stranger here, I sleep beneath the slash of stars,
The Pisgah forest deep and friendless.
I close myself to love, my heart requires the dark;
Can night within this cove be endless?

Come, you’ve slept too long
And love grows dim.
Awaken to a song – Can it be Him?

Is it madness or a dream that seems to whisper here?
The murmur of a stream or singing?
It chants, a still small voice, I’ve nothing now to fear
For tidings of great joy it’s bringing.

Come, you’ve slept too long
And love grows dim.
Awaken to a song and welcome Him!

And now the music swells as every fir and spruce
Unloose their boughs to tell the story:
May all God’s creatures wake, hearts quickened by the truth,
Invited to partake of mercy.

Come, we’ve slept so long
That love grows dim.
Awaken that our song may worship Him.

Come sing it with the wind and all the Pisgah throng:
The Child reclines within the manger!
With owl and bear and deer my soul’s reborn in song
For none of us is here a stranger.

Come, you’ve slept too long;
If love grows dim
Awaken to a song for it is Him!

Waken . . . welcome . . . worship . . . it is Him!

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– Bill

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