Christmas

the town is dead, in dying dreams

december trees with vying lights,

the timbered scenes that blink unseen

in eerie angles down the street.

on holidays, the graves of men

are warmer than the fallen world,

the sheets that form a shawl and tomb,

the keepers of the doomed and spring.

in dark the corpses grow and rot

in pockets kept beneath the snow.

although i wander to and fro,

the freeze that slows the world to stop,

it wraps around in glowing rings

the steeples pointing up to show

my heart is aimed like arrowed bow,

but lowered level to the ground

where pounding feet, in treks alone,

remember trees that grew back home.

• December 2025