Cold December
and the smell of reddened chocolate,
The browns and the golds are
vying with the greens,
The limbs, unencumbered now with leaves
are lined with lights,
And bells, once stuffed inside
the choruses of morning
Now ring, each one, as I walk by,
to show how something is alive that I can't see.
The birds have lost their camouflage
but still they go on singing.
The sky is now too wide to keep the secret
that everything is white
And shining like a moon
in the blue, transparent morning.
