Wet concrete on a New Jersey sidewalk
Townhouses just alike, line the gray street.
Couples out walking wave to each other, or not.
In every city I have lived in since 2012
Christmas has been warmer then usual.
This year, no different, as I tie my jacket
around my growing waist.
I know that somewhere, a puffin species
has taken its last breath. And elsewhere
a family returns to the rubble where the
twister took everything last week.
O come let us Adore him, my mom’s
CD player croons, while she bakes her mother’s
sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top,
nervous she won’t get it just right.
What is the worth of merriment
on a dying planet? I try not to ask myself
as afternoon sun teases my rosy cheeks.
As I turn the corner, almost home, one yard
is graced with blow-up plastic snowmen
falling on their sides. Deflated greetings
Are sometimes the best we can make.
Still we choose this day, to rest from fear.
To not deny what is coming, and the pain
that is already here. But to fuel up.
To admire the beauty of a hawk circling
above the suburban drag, to see hovering
as love today, and not, as threat.
To let our hearts be human, tender. Near.
plantedmoredeeply 