Holiday poems by Edmund Miller, Long Island Poem for Sunday

We had a great pleasure to hear Edmund Miller read the following poems at the Music and Poetry afternoon at Think Long Island First this Saturday. Edmund started with the Going Home for Christmas and continued to haiku poems. The one about chestnuts, New Year's, and an old man was particularly well received, Edmund was asked to read it again.

GOING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS
Edmund Miller

Chewing gum like Zeno's Paradox
a classical marine
passes through Penn Station
with a dufflebag
with roses
with a teddy bear tucked under his arm.

CHRISTMASTIDE HAIKU
Edmund Miller

The wind is nippy,
But the poinsettias sing–
Then it's warm inside.

In the afternoon
Overlooking Christmas shoppers,
Just half the moon.

Overcast in pink.
The clouds lower upon us
To bring virgin snow.

Cold wind through the trees
Then across the clear black sky
Comes the Christmas star.

The gift wrap of snow
melts, washing slowly away
with the holiday.

Rat-a-tats of rain,
clearing the dawn sky, invite
bright light for New Year.

Here in Central Park
Roasting the New Year’s chestnuts
Still the same old man.

The fragile trees
break . . . icicles
in the breeze.

Winter morning
Ice in the milkbottle
Still the stars

The cold freezing rain
weaves trails of tiny paw prints
in yesterday’s snow.

Nutmeg in eggnog
Birthdays the room with New Year’s.
Outside . . . icicles.

Stormy dark above
pink underneath at sunset
chiaroscuro clouds.

Published with author's permission. Included in Stocking Stuffers / seasonal and holiday poems by Prehensile Pencil Publications. For purchase at Think Long Island First.

Edmund Miller, Senior Professor in the English Department at LIU–Post, is a widely published scholar and creative writer. In addition to books about seventeenth-century British literature including three about the poet George Herbert, he has published a collection of stories called Night Times and many volumes of poetry, including the major poetic work The Go-Go Boy Sonnets: Men of the New York Club Scene(2005). Using the traditional sonnet sequence to explore the world of the male dancers, this unique work combines lightness of tone with a seriousness of purpose by including biographical notes, a glossary, and seven indexes as well as translations of individual poems into nearly two dozen languages. Recently, Miller has been writing plays, including The Greeks Have a Word (which revives the form of the Greek satyr play), Royal Favorite (a Jacobean tragicomedy in blank verse), The Last Conquests of Beau Fersen (a Shavan political comedy), and The Colonel’s Lady (a Restoration mystery) besides short plays. He has had several staged readings.

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