Christmas Eve
                     for Joe and Donna

Setting posts this past spring, each twist of the drill
etching rock with a metal star, I thought:
this place is finally home;
Christmas, I'll take the children to the barn ---

I was told once the animals will speak
but so very slow each syllable joins the next
and all sound becomes a steady breathing. I was told
that in the place of a breath, a lamb
could praise all creatures above and below his knowing,
and that the speech of beasts is like no other:
the tones so high, so sweet.

But on that midnight, Fm driving a back road.
I pull to the side, stop the motor,
roll down the window,
my breathing quiets. Out of silence
an owl lifts from the dense wood,
his body a shadow:
the slow hoo, hoohoo, hoo, hoo on one note
fluent as a child's deep breath in wordless sleep.

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Forsythia

From the hall I watched him shatter the orange dishes
my mother thought unbreakable--
slamming them against gray tile
as she crouched, denying milkman, mailman,
all who came to the house while he was at work,
who heard quick breaths between her words,
appraised her body.

Each night
I set the table and when it was time
we all sat down for him to lead us in grace,
careful to keep our elbows off the cloth,
careful to eat everything so he wouldn't say
how ungrateful we were for the food on our plates
and then, with his leather belt, teach us manners.
But when he smashed those dishes I ran.

It was still light so it must have been spring,
yes, May, because I crawled through wands
supple as whips but studded with blossoms
to get inside the forsythia cave.
I looked as hard as I could:
each stem was a tight green throat,
each mouth tongueless gold entered by bees
whose furry bodies spun back out
dusted with pollen, carrying nectar
in pouches on their spindly legs,
and watching them
I almost forgot the sounds inside the house
until my mother slammed the windows down
and my ears filled with buzzing.
Huddled in the damp earth beneath forsythia,
straining for silence, I watched night
billow up from the dirt, sapping the flowers.
When the crashes stopped,
she called for me; Come in. Come in.

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