They sprawl everywhere
Long legs, new-blooming selves,
Prescient words, questions, as
Their freshest lives and undefinable
Tethers reach and grow,
When they and we understand that now
They move into who they are
While their parents watch, achieving
Distance and their nana remembers her
Grown-up children those
Many long-ago Christmases
The wood floors have snowy
Paw prints, boot-tracks,
Picking up the flotsam
From the unswept porch and countless
Ins and outs, pick up coffee, don’t
Forget the fennel and before you
Go off to the market, can you bring
In the firewood?
The dogs go in and out,
With this one or on that errand
Glory be, there are nine
Of them, best dogs.
Someone puts another log on the
Fire in the Dead Parents Room
As the magic music of my Christmases
Past calms and locates me in my
Season here. It fills our old house
And we all, in the family camaraderie
Of trying to stay warm
In this unimaginable cold
That no old house has had to
Endure for too
Long, to say nothing of its humans
And the ancient others,
Burst in our ways into an emerging
And rather fulsome
Wholeness that comforts me.
They bookend me. They move into
And I move on,
Opening new-birthed
Winter horizons
Mine, I guess,
Anyway, speaking for myself,
A necessary kind of light comes
Somehow, to my surprise, and
I open my eyes wider in awareness
And tell myself now, listen, it’s
Time for sleep.
