A Christmas Morning Poem
Give us This Day…
A certain piece of bread tastes
like no other.
Its outer crust gives way
to the soft melting underneath.
After a storm, the frozen kind—people move differently,
as if they might fall;
or perhaps, the snow and ice block
their usual walkways.
No amount of shoveling or chipping
breaks through to the melting.
Only a steady sun can do that.
In its own time.
Even so, we believe in the thaw.
The sun. The teeth in the crust.
The giving way. The steady melt.
We believe.
Until one day we do not.
It is that simple.
One day
we do not believe.
And in that doubt, the crust stales.
The ice dams.
The wind keeps
at its steady, cold pace.
When I look out my window now
at this age that I am—
this middle life—
bare trees scratch the sky.
It is still the same sky
that covered the prairie child—
the girl who wondered who she was
and still today—so many suns later—wonders.
Before the first freeze,
the first thaw—her eyes saw.
Her lips tasted.
Her ears heard.
And now, her teeth chatter in the wind,
hungry for stillness,
for something
that melts beneath the crust.
Commenting is closed for this article.