Digging for God. Anne Higgins

those days,

      the tree inhabited the living room,

      dressy guest drinking water,

      lulling me with balsam voice.

      Long pine needles jabbed my lips

      as I crouched beneath the spiny arms

      basking in the tawdry magic

      of twinkle lights.

      Golden glass balls mirrored my five year old face.

      Needles now pink, now yellow, now green on

      my concave cheeks and brow,

      brown hair tangled with tinsel.

      In those days I would build

      a small town under the tree,

      cardboard houses with glitter glazed roofs

      clutched the cotton snow,

      a mirror turned into the frozen lake

      the cricket sized skaters skirted,

      the faithful ice full of the heaven

      of tree branches.

      In those days I stretched out

      underneath the tree in the dark room,

      to watch the lights make ever changing

      color , ever changing dark patterns

      on the wall above.

      Remember a specific image from a Christmas from your childhood.

      Talk to God about what that image meant to you.

      Wintering on St. Mary’s Mountain

      Lawnfrost, glittering sparrows,

      lights in the twig taut trees.

      In the cold sky,

      planes, planets,

      space stations.

      Grey stone college buildings

      on the paws of the mountain,

      empty of students

      gone for Christmas.

      Icy wind shrugs off

      mountain’s hump.

      Great mother bear of a mountain

      emerges from hiding

      when the leaves lawn her fur.

      Rattlesnakes sleep in the

      fat folds of her belly,

      in the creases behind her knees.

      Owls and woodpeckers

      skim the gravestones—

      buttons on her broad brown coat.

      Recall your school life.

      Picture your school buildings and surrounding natural scenery.

      Imagine yourself walking those grounds with God.

      What do you say to each other?

      Nearsighted

      Although the eye doctor’s chart

      melted sadly into the wall ,

      I can see this minute before me,

      like a snowbird in the feeder

      eighteen inches from my face.

      We stare at each other through the window.

      His black beady eye is watchful.

      I also can see nouns and ruins,

      hairs on my arms,

      wrinkles on my hands,

      pulls in my stockings and pills in my sweaters.

      I can see the ocean, near me in my mind.