LITMIR.BIZ

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      your intention here,

      beside the presentiment

      of warmth I formed

      watching you slap snow

      from your wool hat.

      Press

      your cold cheek

      and smile

      on mine.

      Christ

      enter your lips

      through mine, a prayer

      love calls forty years

      of freeze and thaw,

      naming as we go

      God in the going

      on.

      Speak

      through fingertip and kiss

      the word for being

      here and gone.

      Put your hand here,

      Thomas.

      I am so cold.

      Transcend

      the isolate, lips

      full on the mouth,

      warm now before the fire,

      tiny lights, cedar smell,

      still clumsy with yearning

      after all these years.

      Kneel

      beside the straw

      and figurines, hearth

      with andirons

      cold as snow,

      black bent nails

      driven into the fire

      that never fails.

      Listen

      to one whisper

      above the choir on the radio,

      the splash of wine,

      windswept sleet and snow

      against the window.

      Come

      to bed, says the spirit,

      mouth full of kisses

      in the darkness.

      You are home.

      Come closer.

      The storm rages.

      THE POWER

      Snow savages the highway

      with silence.

      Where are the speeding cars

      and trucks full of gears?

      Where is the road?

      Where is the lower yard?

      The back porch stairs are gone.

      We peer through windows frosted

      with breath and our separate

      reflected selves.

      The ancient temptation

      surrounds us. Alone

      in our snowbound house, we look

      without seeing. How natural

      to be afraid.

      The tree will not light,

      nor the window candles

      no traveler would see anyway.

      Their blank bulbs are dead

      to our rhythmic breathing.

      Like half of those we love.

      They are never home anymore.

      Their decorations are boxed

      and forgotten. It is too cold

      altogether, and we are snow blind.

      Our breath is visible.

      Wind moans down the chimney,

      leaps with feral eagerness

      onto the side porch.

      You squeeze my hand.

      Our mantel crèche is lost

      in shadow as if the child

      were never born. The ox, sheep,

      camel and kings stare

      into the darkness to find him.

      I remember years ago,

      the cabin drifted in, oil-line frozen,

      my iron zero skeleton

      an aching cage, three days

      to thaw back into life.

      Perhaps the everyday—

      tinsel, lights, wrapped gifts—

      will not return this time.

      Perhaps all will be overturned

      tonight in a storm

      sufficient to the need,

      great annunciatory wings

      of snow wrapping a body

      finally laid to rest.

      Come, Holy Spirit.

      Grasping hands empty

      of things, strong legs

      with nowhere left to go,

      the brain dims its energy

      in favor of the heart,

      and in darkness the child

      grows, the idea

      of the child grows near

      thanks to an emptiness

      almost perfect.

      Come, Holy Spirit.

      Beat your wings in time

      to our blood-pulse, the lone

      plow scraping at the silence,

      and this one flickering streetlight.

      I SAW THREE SHIPS: MANNY’S CHRISTMAS

      From his apartment window the old man watched

      Christmas take over the block. Wreaths on doors,

      sometimes floodlit. Window candles. Abstract rhymes

      of tiny white lights threading bare trees.

      He knew his neighbors were no more happy

      than he was. All for the kids he supposed.

      Then he saw the creche down at Trinity

      begin to glow: Jesus, Mary, Joseph

      in white plastic clothes. What denomination

      Trinity was he had no idea.

      But he liked the lean-to and straw, the baby lord.

      And “creche.” He liked the slippiness—

      French, of course—playing like light around

      his mouth. He folded up the killing fields

      of The lntelligencer, absentmindedly

      looked back over seventy-five years

      of assumptions to the tiny stable set

      she put up despite the old man’s roarings.

      Room to room until he gave up.

      “Read

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