Wyoming Arts Council

Christmas Night by Conrad Hillberry

Let midnight gather up the wind

and the cry of tires on bitter snow.

Let midnight call the cold dogs home,

sleet in their fur–last one can blow

the streetlights out. If children sleep

after the day’s unfoldings, the wheel

of gifts and griefs, may their breathing

ease the strange hollowness we feel.

Let midnight draw whoever’s left

to the grate where a burnt-out log unrolls

low mutterings of smoke until

a small fire wakes in its crib of coals.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2008 by Conrad Hilberry, whose most recent book of poetry is After-Music, Wayne State University Press, 2008. Poem reprinted from The Hudson Review, Vol. 60, no. 4, Winter 2008, by permission of Conrad Hilberry. Introduction copyright (c) 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.