JANUARY IDYLL

In this two-headed month
Look forward and behind
And see the land
Where the hills are kind
And sometimes end in houses;
One house in particular notice
Where love lives
With its two gardens
Vegetable and flower.
Here is a land to be explored,
Its forests are dark and dense
Except where spattered by drops of sunlight;
Here the end of all winding roads
                May be found,
       And ourselves if we wish.

DAD’S LAST GIFT

A birthday present,
belated, hurried, ludicrous,
I picked the first thing even
close off the discount shelf,
a clumsy plaster Old Woman in a Shoe
ash tray, forgetting he  was
in the throes of trying to quit;
Mom berated me, my brother
belittled it, but I didn’t care,
I wanted to at least get him something.

Not that I knew
it was going to be his last birthday,
making his quitting and my gifting
too little too late, or that
I wouldn’t be there when he died,
having left home two weeks before
over a misunderstanding,
or that my good intentions
would not be accepted as
retrospective recompense-
they never allowed me even that.

Instead I was left to stand outside
in the frigid air as they wheeled him out.
I carried this with me for a long time,
and even if he wasn’t my real
father (whom I never knew) it was
good practice for future losses,
a dress rehearsal of sorts,
though standing out in the raw air
on that dark night frozen in time,
I might as well have been naked.

Tom Evans, Croton-on-Hudson, Westchester, New York