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Mid-January                                                          ( published in Runes )

A child creeps beneath the covers
of her parents' bed. Perhaps it was a nightmare—
a ten-second flash of the boy on the news
lifted from between subway cars,
his arm pulled from the socket.
It could have been hunger, thirst, the cold.
Even the desire to sleep between both her fathers
could have pulled her from her own bed
in the early hours when the world is half-asleep.
One father is about to wake, curse the alarm,
stumble downstairs, unaware that across town
the boy from the news has died.
In the kitchen he cracks eggs into a ceramic bowl.
Soon his family will join him at the table
grinding the sleep from their eyes.
Outside, the wind dies down. Snowplows
scrape roads clear for the morning commute.
After breakfast one half leaves for the office
while the other two walk into town
counting the discarded Christmas trees
shrouded in plastic and stacked like bodies at the curb.