The day after calm before

Once again we have successfully enjoyed a family Christmas. It's all over now but for putting out the trashed wrapping and recycling the cardboard and saving the best cards. Each and every one seemed pleased with what Santa, friends, and family delivered. We think we've been prohibited from attending real or virtual bookstores for the next several months. Our stack of unread, much desired, books exceeds any hope of allowing us to catch up for the foreseeable future. Not a bad problem to have when one is faced with a North Country Winter. In fact, as we write this we're wondering which side of the rain-snow line we'll end up on. Forecasts call for a storm starting later today and lasting until sometime Friday. We're within the proverbial "spitting' distance" of a line of uncertainty dividing 2 inches of snow from 12 plus inches. Wish us luck.

snowflake Christmas cookies--the best kind

Photo by J. Harrington

After all the exciting preparations and the busy holiday yesterday, and several handfuls of Christmas cookies, we're plumb tuckered out, coming down from a sugar high, and so today's, and maybe tomorrow's, postings will be short and sweet. We're full of gratitude for both what we have, family, friends, coffee, books, home, and what we don't have, severe disabilities, unpayable bills, war, pestilence, any of the four horsemen. That's some of the nicest presence we can imagine. Soon, perhaps too soon, it will be time for--

Taking Down the Tree

By Jane Kenyon

"Give me some light!" cries Hamlet's

uncle midway through the murder

of Gonzago. "Light! Light!" cry scattering

courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,

it's dark at four, and even the moon

shines with only half a heart.

The ornaments go down into the box:

the silver spaniel, My Darling

on its collar, from Mother's childhood

in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack

my brother and I fought over,

pulling limb from limb. Mother

drew it together again with thread

while I watched, feeling depraved

at the age of ten.

With something more than caution

I handle them, and the lights, with their

tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along

from house to house, their pasteboard

toy suitcases increasingly flimsy.

Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.

By suppertime all that remains is the scent

of balsam fir. If it's darkness

we're having, let it be extravagant.

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