One of the central beliefs of Christianity is that people couldn’t reach high enough (so to speak) to touch God so God became human in the person of Jesus. Christmas is a time when we especially remember God becoming human in Jesus as the focus is Jesus’s birth.
Below is a sonnet I wrote a number of years ago that parallels the course of a snowflake with the course of Jesus’s life. The inspiration for this poem was Isaiah 55:10-11–“As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish…so is my word that goes out from my mouth….”
The first two stanzas of my poem imagine Jesus becoming flesh—the divine spirit “crystalizing” into a body—and coming to earth. The third stanza compares the snowflake landing on a grass blade to Jesus being hung on the cross and dying. The final couplet uses the imagery of spring to suggest that Jesus’s death brought new life to everything through His resurrection from the dead. This fact makes Christmas very merry indeed 😊
“Down from Heaven” appeared in my first book of poetry, The Wind and the Shadows.
Down from Heaven In grayish convolutions being stirred by currents that converged from every side, in mysteries and mist it crystallized, like language from meditation’s vapor. And from the folded curtain of the clouds It pirouetted, leaped, and lilted down, tracing cursive paths across the sky, a signature, a witness for all eyes. Then softly, as when death comes during sleep, it laid its lacy frost upon a blade of grass, to melt, to trickle, and to seep away, like words do after one has prayed. No sign of it remained, but tender shoots rose from the ground and burst in fragrant blooms.
A Wandering Minstrel 