Any other year we’d take I-40’s curve
where the road hugs the mountains
in a wide swerve while below
the Pigeon River sparkles silver tinsel
brimful of sunlight like Christmas stars
gathered their glitter in the gorge,
and left it there till night, in blue satin,
reached for its diamond gems again.
We’d forge between the Blue Ridge,
along the mountain bridge between
north and south, the quickest route
to Grandma and her cardamom rolls,
to ice-fished lakes, and sledding knolls,
and everyone together for a week.
Any other year grandma’s kitchen
would smell of yeast and spices:
mint lamb roast, toasted marshmallows
melting into cocoa or slake our thirst
with milky chai. My mother, her sister, and I
would bend over tumbling letters,
mind-boggling words pulled sideways,
tangled-in on top of each other.
When I was a baby, their brother
left them breathless over Christmas,
his thin teen frame, too fragile for a new year.
They untangle words and memories
list them on paper, checking what they’ve missed.
This year the river tore apart the mountains.
Out of stately filigree, a fountain
heaved the broken heavens open, wrenching
the roadway from its neck, dying the silver
red with lumps of thick clay. We cannot say
how it will end. Around the bend is too far
to see whether the thin band of road will
pull us sideways. Our hearts tangle each other
unwilling to let go. Mind-boggling words
wrap labels we cannot quite make out.
And the kitchen must be quiet,
while grandma’s blue veins pulse burning stars.
This Christmas is ours. We are not promised
another. We cannot take the old ways
there and back. We only have
these honest hours awake, alive, together.
