ELIZABETH MACKLIN
It could be a wintering bear this year,
long furred & yet unclassified fat fir, rearing
uncrouched by the couch, a bear cub, my first—
a Douglas?—first ever long-needle pine & name unknown.
So thickly fern-broom-, borzoi-or yak-feathered,
whisks under eaves, that ornaments disappear:
the forest of branches has made an interior,
all of her ornaments inside in, and not shown.
But let them try to remain hidden: glass-bird
light paint glows like a house in the woods at four,
snowbound-warm and excited given. It hides this year
but desires to be seen—makes no grief—to be spoken.
This year’s tree makes its scent felt across the yards
in between; the past at last has remade the present. Hark
not to the shining idols but to their singular deity, inward
invisible bird fir fragrance, who says they could even be broken.
1999