As the loquacious preacher expounded
on the inerrancy of the Bible and the existence of God,
and I, mesmerized, by his tide of words and hefty claims,
rose to raise my hands in surrender to his theological loft,
two wasps flew through an open window
and stung my palms.

And when the preacher went on about the woes
of doubting and straying from the fixed exegesis
of The Book, that “covered everything,”
and I was about to join in with a hearty, Amen!,
the piercing cry of a golden eagle,
struck my ears and rendered me mute.

And after the service, in the parking lot,
where a group had gathered to discuss the sermon,
and praise the irrefutable preacher, I paused to listen;
and when I was about to nod my acquiescent head,
a Pacific dogwood threw a branch over my shoulder
and spun me around,
and when I was about to protest — you guessed it —
a lily of the valley pressed a petal against my lips,
and led me away.

Every year around this time I call the farm.
I listen to the muted ring of the rotary phone, and wait.
Mom says, “Hello?” Her voice, careful at first, then,
“Oh Stephen, I was just thinking of you.”

The low January sun is bouncing off the drifts into the kitchen.
Sunny Boy cereal is bubbling on the enamel hot plate.
Dad has stepped out of the porch into the snow
and is using the steel grain shovel to clear a path to the tractor shed.
The line crackles and mom says, “Will you be coming home
in the spring?”

The drifts are high from last night’s wind.
But now there’s a vast great plains calm.
It’s cold and there’s a reverence of hoarfrost on the grey poles,
and the drooping lines, and the green glass insulators;
and chimes of snow crystals hang in the blue refulgent air.

With braille eyes I reach through the receiver to touch
mom’s face. Her eyes are lakes of kindness. And I say,
“Seeding time — I’ll try to be home by then.”

Now the voice goes quiet and I listen to the hum of the line,
which really isn’t there — nor the telephone,
no longer the house, or the shed, or the prairie farm.

Because we followed an evening star,
here, to our new slimmed-down home
among the stolid mountains,
the high jewel lakes, the anxious highway,
the lordly logging trucks,
the life-giving waterfalls of Holland Creek,
the pushy mufflers of Ford 150s,
parked by the shining shops on First,
the lineup at the cinnamon-bun bakery,
gluten-free at Wild Poppy,
the slick black canopy of Salamander Books,
nests of knick-knacks at the general store,
and the old Temperance Hotel, now a gallery
with framed impressions of the Salish Sea;
on to Transfer Beach, its gritty history,
and a constellation of boats,
their masts and sails defined by strings of lights —
the way Christmas puts all things in high relief —
then back to the levitating suburbs,
light the gas fireplace, ease the yearly hollowness
with mulled wine — bury some worries
of the temporary kind.

This year, family-absent, we’ll celebrate
with local friends, share the family stories,
our speckled histories.
We’ll chatter up the joys, modulate the sorrows —
loving reunions, unsolvable divisions —
all that’s real and never far from pain or laughter.
And I’ll prattle on about last-years perfect Christmas,
then recall the one before,
I saw my partner weeping.