Creating Love

—Anonymous

HOW DO WE CREATE LOVE?
—Michael H. Brownstein, Jefferson City, MO
 
There—the ghost trees of the Missouri, gray-skinned and thin,
too early in the morning, winter, but too warm to be winter,
a shroud of white veneer colors them in fog and cloud-wash.
On the other side of the river across from the vast field of
trains, a lone man walks on the mucked flats searching for a
gift. He has nothing to offer, it’s Christmas, but the love he
carries. This is never enough, and he understands, but he holds
its flint and every now and then tries to bend it into a shape he
can give. A light wetness begins to fall, not cold and not warm,
soft like down. He holds out his hand, catches a few drops, lets
them linger on his palm, licks them off, smiles at their taste,
the rain sweet and filling, a pleasant rain and when it stops, he
looks over the river, over the space where he stands, studies
the busy current, thinks of what is deep within him, what
thoughts he holds dear, and then he sees it, a color in the black
tarred mud along the shore.

A flower does not know it is winter. It feels summer’s strength
and lets its seed push it to the surface. There it lets a single
blossom face the sun, lets its leaves touch a warm wind, drink
the lather of dew. It does not understand shorter days, deep
drops in temperament nor does it know its flower formed a
heart-shape red and pink, a touch of blue, honeysuckled, full
of harmony. When it feels the man’s shadowsettle over it, when
the man cuts off the blossom, it does not know to flinch.

There—the great mistletoe hanging over the path, the swamp
vines, the thick huckleberry, and in the distant, ghost trees,
white-haired. He thanks the flower for its blossom, and begins
to sing softly, then louder, a deep bass, and somehow the river
too knows and its current begins to move differently, and some-
how the wind knows and it slows its gait, and somehow a length
of swamp grass knows, and the ancient trees along the
shoreline visible and invisible in the river fog, the cloud fog.

 —Artwork by Andrew Darlington, Ossett, W. Yorkshire, England

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Our Christmas thanks to Michael Brownstein for today’s poem; it’s from his newest book, How Do We Create Love? from Cholla Needles Press, 2019. And thanks also to Andrew Darlington, who sent us these colorful Christmas works of his from over the sea.

—Medusa, celebrating the honeysuckle and the ancient ghost trees and all the poets, who also somehow know what they need to know ~ 

 —Artwork by Andrew Darlington
May you never be too grown-up to search the skies on Christmas Eve…

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