to Mary

A child unborn, the coming year

Grows big within us, dangerous,

And yet we hunger as we fear

For its increase: the blunted bud

To free the leaf to have its day,

The unborn to be born.  The ones

Who are to come are on their way,

And though we stand in mortal good

Among our dead, we turn in doom

In joy to welcome them, stirred by 

That Ghost who stirs in seed and tomb,

Who brings the stones to parenthood.

~ Wendell Berry

from This Day - Collected and New Sabbath Poems