Dry Run

Hottest Christmas in years,
read the headlines. The fig tree is
confused, pushing out small

feelers of buds. Warm mist in the air,
thick fog for miles so it feels like the inside
of a greenhouse. Hardware stores nervously eye

snow shovel deliveries that nobody now
will buy. Further south, a Christmas day
tornado and floods. And in the desert, snow

and freezing winds. Whatever world
we fear is coming seems to have arrived.
Wrap your arms in layers of gauze. Be nothing

but tender toward the body
whose ashes will soon rain down
on the ocean’s thick piled curtains.