5:00 PM
Home thoughts

1

Nochebuena / Christmas Eve:
last year, a star fell down the chimney
and landed on the poinsettia.

The cat and the dog stood up to deliver
new versions of their Christmas vision.

Birch bark: ghosts on the snow bank turned
white in the moonlight as they danced,
so slender and so bright.

An obsidian knife hacks through the mind
carving it into two uneven pieces.
Snowflakes invade its split personality.
Thin ice spread across glacial fires.

Incarcerated birds sing in the rib cage.
A child’s world: with its lost toy
buried beneath fresh snow.

2

Last night tears froze in my eyes
and fell to the earth as stars.

Now I am an enormous sunflower,
trapped in this wet clay rag of a body.

If I lie here in silence
will my world go on without me?

The bird of paradise opens his eye,
all querulous with sunshine,
and watches me waiting.