This week’s poem in the Catholic Poetry Room is by Jenna Funkhouser.

Christmas Vigil

Night holds this memory
In its dark box of velvet
A cold jewel in the deep
Palm of the sky.

Every star remembers
And sings its secret
Lullaby to to the soft cries
Of the newborn moon.

The grass still grows
In patches of blue fire
And lambs still feed
On mouthfuls of sharp astonishment.

And man lives on in widening
Circles of grace, trailed
Everywhere by mercy, nourished
By the gentle hands of Light

As tendrils of dawn climb high
On the dark trellis of eternity.


Jenna Funkhouser is a multi-genre writer with published work in faith-based publications such as Voices of Justice as well as on her website, Downwind of Grace. Her first collection of poetry, Pilgrims I Have Been, was published in October 2020. She sees her role as a poet as tracing the quiet workings of grace and is especially influenced by sacramental imagery and thought.

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