Janie picked up the paperweight,
the one you gave me, last Christmas.

She said
it was the most beautiful thing in the room.

She cupped it like an egg
in her palm,
turning her face away,
when I spoke of you.

No one
had ever given me such a gift!

The Night Sky, caught in glass!
Vincent’s screaming Heaven–
my own
Flying dreams;
The weight of you.

I carried that orb as if it were my child,
over an entire country,
to a City of Angels,
I carried it packed like a bomb
in my suitcase,
Sure
it would go off.

Miles now
from the nearest Winter,
I spend January under rain.

Cactus
blooms below me; there are orange trees and
the Golden State
is the road I take
home.

I cradle that opaque egg,
remembering who we were;
How you looked
as you handed it to me;
unhatched memory,
A week
past Christmas.

Pressing it to my ear,
the Geese come back.

Your love sounds;
the sighing
of fir
and oak.

The snap of ice
and
crusted cover
of a New York
snow.