(I posted this poem in December of last year, but I can’t resist posting it again…)
Whoa, December, wait one minute
I’m hardly roused from my feasted slumber
When you start to number my days
Set clocks and worry flocks of shoppers
Lost in evergreen lots and sticker-shock
Tick tock, sweet silver bells ringing the hour
As if to hurry my step into line
My dour minuet with Father Time
Stumbling on to the end
The bitter end of another year
Another calendar page, scrawled
With duty and a glitter of waste
With things I never desired
The blouse gift-receipt, creased
In haste and taped over the size
I couldn’t accept, a final refrain
After the glaze is scraped
From cold and golden morns
And oh, December, wait please wait
For the lights to change, for fire
To blaze through our litter of wrappings
Pause tonight among muttering beasts
In their scatter of straw, their dusty ease
From lust’s numb ache, from labor’s strain
Rest among these flight-tired geese
Mid-route, heads tucked under folded
Wings, murmuring psalms to themselves
Rae Spencer 