The Beauty
of His Feet on Christmas Morning
(for Janos)
Outside
the covers, beneath my lips.
Paper
and bows from last night’s unwrapping
crushed
into balls
on
the carpet downstairs.
Stockings
now emptied.
Board games await the
afternoon.
The
coffee’s unmade, and his son sleeps
in
his jeans. Rabbit tracks pock the snow
between
townhouses. Spruce stand there
like
shepherds, like the souls
of
our beloved dead.
Possibly
I have died, too. Another spent candle
among
the ceramic nativity scene,
the
donkey and cow
each
missing their right ear.
The
world glows. Daylight on his feet,
the
gospel of snow. A rain of crumbs
where
we sat late into the night, laughing
and
eating Hungarian biscuits.
The
poinsettia’s leaves. The silent guitar.
The
delicate sculpture of his arch.
Amid
the chaos and flurries—
holiness
and champagne. These bared,
innocent
flares. No one beating
at
my doors. Only these
two
stark winter birds. I begin again
at
his shoreline.
-Shelley A. Leedahl
