Crossing the Stars on New Year’s Eve

​
Another year.  As if exercising its right to be a symbol,
the digital clock breaks down at 12:15
with a sound like birds chirping.  I open the drapes
and stare at the empty house across the woodlot,
beyond it Thrushwood Lake—an old-fashioned oval mirror
fallen in snow, reflecting the moonlight.

Such moonlight!  It is as if I'm staring
into a winter batik, cracked with the lines
of birches and poplars—or a jigsaw puzzle
glued together, hung on a flickering wall
beneath a spotlight shining from the ceiling,
the light between the lines absorbed, absorbing.

Behind me, in your long blue gown, you're watching
a movie of the Alps.  The mountain climbers each
have sewn a shriveled eagle's tongue inside their coats;
and one is snow-blind, holding up the rest.
You whisper, "Look at this."  I turn and he is falling,
tumbling, bouncing, sliding from the crest.

I shiver, thinking of a face inside a cowl,
how too great clarity makes things untrue,
and it starts snowing now.  The oval lake turns white,
a backdrop for an onyx cameo.
Nothing in a film, say cameramen, is quite so beautiful
as scenes shot through the slowly falling snow.

You shut the television off.  A blanket wrapped around
your shoulders, you stand by me.  All out there
is fading into white.  The hills, the lake, the house,
the woodlot—all are gone.  The moon has disappeared
inside a bank of clouds.  Just swirling snow
I shine a flashlight into meets our eyes.

"But how beautiful," you say, "a tunnel, look!"
And we peer into it, along the flashlight's beam,
at crystals spiraling.  It's as if we've poked
a hole right through a swirling galaxy
of dense stars.  At the tunnel's end
a living tree stands branched out like a man.