It's Christmas Day and there's no snow on the ground, no sheet of dark water frozen between the river's banks. No panic of angel wings imprinted on fresh-fallen mounds. No snow in Denver either, nor in Rockport IL; though blizzard snow has fallen on the peaks of Mauna Koa and Mauna Loa. And someone somewhere is wrapping and unwrapping presents, or eating cheese, melon wheels, and pineapple spears— though not the genetically modified pink pineapple cultivated on a farm in south central Costa Rica— the things you could have if you live in a country where you get hot or cold water at the turn of a spigot and wait for blue-gray vans with a bent arrow and the name of one of the world's largest rivers painted on their sides; they deliver computer parts as well as coconut jam and mandolin strings. But someone somewhere is waiting for rescue from a mountaintop or preparing to bury their father. Someone is wishing for a child, for a carton of relief goods, for a way to get home after years of walking every detour in the countryside.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.