Winter Seen

Season of the sun in its faraway tilt,

days of opposites, of compensation;

silent night and jingle bells,

while cash registers ring themselves

out of the red, hearts shrink, pockets swell,

skeletal sycamore outside the window

in its requiem mass against hallelujah

spruce, lit and tinseled inside.

The glitz we insist upon

to propitiate the gods

against the dying of the light.

We gift wrap our eyes.

to imagine the fabled baby

within a manger of bulbs

on the wild desert floor.

Deck the halls with lit menorahs

to answer the sun in its apogee.

 

Only by great exertion can those

in the hemisphere below  

take our myth as theirs,

of candles or White Christmas,

sleighs dancing through the snow

in a one-horse heat of December summer,

just like the ones they never knew.

 

As in the cycle of my life,

now in the mind of winter,

I feel no discontent on my inscape,

in spite of the shadows cast.

Something new is daily born.