December 18, 2012
One sun ornament hanging on the Tree of Life;
Shivery bluebirds’ beaks sifting for baked seeds from curled, singed grass,
Fine black ash smelling like bitter chicory,
Wild turkeys pecking their way through the black snow;
Sunlight absorbed by ghostsmoke and cremation and black mass:
A concatenation of feasts of carbon, of color:
For fire leads to more grass leads to finer flowers leads to sweeter nectar
Leads to more bees, more vibrating strings of prairie roots on Nature’s harp;
So fire is a penultimate Christmas gift, a pagan gift, God’s and the gods’ gifts,
A fox and coyote and screech owl and field mouse gift,
A gift of future for the lonely, for the lost, for the loved:
An infinite, chatoyant solstice light . . .
Bluebirds the bells, woodpeckers the carolers,
Red-tail hawks the priests of meditation, kestrels the hovering angels:
“Hallelujah,” the wing and the prayer and the hope and the holy, the wholly
Chanted by the kin of dinosaurs:
(One moon ornament hanging on the Tree of Life.)
