An Advent Calendar Poem: Twenty-four Windows, by Theresa Zappe

My Adventskalender in Germany made
Of paper and glitter has Heaven displayed
Through twenty-four windows. Come open with me
Each miniature vision of things heavenly.

Behind the first window are rabbits who dance.
The second, a glittering snowflake enchants,
And third, there’s a cat lying down with a mouse
Behind the fourth window, a gingerbread house.

On opening five, a droll chariot lifts.
The sixth is the day for the old Saint with gifts.
His pack holds the seventh, beribboned, a pet.
Number eight is an apple and not bitten yet.

At nine we find sisters with cookies to bake.
Their brothers at ten skate across the wide lake.
Eleven’s a choir wrapped up to their noses,
And twelve is a knight and a Lady with roses.

December thirteenth, Scandinavian girls
Lay wreaths holding candles upon their bright curls.
At fourteen, they knock at a cottage aglow
Where good folk set out for the church down below.

Stained glass in the window bears fifteen; we find
A pageant in progress, a child’s Palestine.
The Bethlehem star is ablaze at sixteen
O’er monarchs at seventeen kneeling between

The ox at eighteen and at nineteen, the ass.
Let’s stop for a moment, we’re going too fast.
For twenty reveals lovely Mary at prayer;
I would like to be quiet and kneel with her there.

As Joseph stands by us beneath twenty-one,
His lantern as constant and bright as the sun,
A Baby behind twenty-two seems to be
A doll to be played with by poor you and me.

Behind twenty-three, proof that angels are real.
The last is a Child whose wounds have been healed!
The twenty-fourth window, just open and see,
His cross come to life as a green Christmas tree!

Oh, see how He beckons us children to enter
Our heavenly home in the Adventskalender!

Once a high school Spanish teacher, Theresa Zappe is now a home educator in New York.  She and her husband are much occupied with math, meals, science, soccer games, sentence diagrams, dirty dishes, Latin, and laundry.