The Weeks Before

Dick Allen

The most beautiful of Christmas ornaments
we've hung from the four pine beams
that cross our living room ceiling. On the shelf
above the fireplace, crowding against the wooden
statue of the monk who looks like an ancient angel,
hands folded in prayer, his cowl like folded wings,
the Christmas cards begin to gather with
each afternoon mail. I add yours
(a little scene of a man who walks through snow
toward something in the hills)
beside the doctor's card of two red birds
sitting on a limb beside a watermill
and water bubbling through the ice below.
I try to think of Jesus and his birth,
all that traveling, the way I saw
a woman hold her baby wrapped in blue
winter clothing yesterday, the light
around them, and I think of how
children ride toboggans, how I first
encountered Dickens and that joy
of Scrooge in the window, when it came
to pass that it was Christmas, still. I turn
on the radio: now sleighbells ring
quietly beneath the ornaments, and chimes
are pealing, voices rise, the wind
drifts against the house. I touch your card
again. I steal a little wedge
of fruitcake from the cupboard, read
the Williams poem on the burning of the greens,
let the kitten sleep against my legs
and slowly realize that it
is snowing and so beautiful
I would lie down for you and I would make
snow angels for you from my shattered form.

Visit Dick Allen as Image Artist of the Month for February '04

Issue #36• Fall 2002