Home for the Holidays

Christmas 2013 at home.

A Poem for Christmas in Port Townsend

Light blue, a wet wind

hustles heavy clouds in from the Pacific.

The sun cracks a smile,

            washes our house in gold,

            yellow for the neighbors,

            a rainbow for everyone.

Tumbling merrily, a vagabond cloud

brushes waving cedars on the ridge.

It looks like rain,

            it looks like sun,

            it looks like Spring,

            like everything all at once.

White-winged, a common gull

perches on a red brick chimney atop a black roof.

The clouds sweep by,

            leap riverlike from North Beach

            to cross the Strait

            all the way to Victoria.

Smiling sleepily, you yawn

ask from the kitchen, “Where’s the sugar?”

Pour milk over Cheerios,

            pour me another cup of coffee,

            pour your love over me,

            all through the days and nights.

Awash in light this morning,

pouring over that gull, our house, this town,

Life cracks a smile,

            gives us this Christmas,

            gives us this home,

            gives us each other.

All this color, this Christmas, this time.

Christmas 2012 in North Cove, Kawau Island NZ.