Midnight finds you driving home after work.
The streets are empty.
The houses, muted and curved
like caves under a wave of snow,
seem far away tonight.
A streetlight blinks on and off,
red, green, and red,
mechanical and impersonal
as the Christmas lights
dotting the invisible trees.
They, too, seem to belong to the air.
The children will be asleep,
tired of waiting this longest and darkest of days,
their faces opening like hands to a dream.
It is all you can do to recall such bliss,
the nights you slept
in the sheltered knowledge of a tree.
Grave and beautiful,
it breathed in the center of the house for weeks.
Stepping onto the cold bare floor,
past your parents’ room,
you would leave your small bed
to find it still there, alive in the green dark.
Your wife will be wrapping the last gift,
alone in the basement with a family
of socks and shirts,
each one identical,
obedient and inexhaustible.
She has asked for nothing of you this Christmas.
And you will not surprise her.
Carrying the silver package up the stairs,
she will glance out the window
noting the hour and the snow.
The tracks the children left have disappeared.
She will not forget to leave on the backyard light.
It burns away a circle of dark,
shining on a snowdrift
the shape of a tricycle.
All that you have ever wanted is here,
asleep.
It is all you can do to find your way home.
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