December, or Monique and Paris 2005.

(1)

Winter, at her worst, is asleep.

She is not a fiery, raging goddess;

Rather, she stretches across the fields

Dreaming of a time when she wasn't as cold.

Her remembering tears are caught by blades of grass,

Her breath misting in the cold of a winter night.

Sitting alone at my dying bonfire,

A warmth I'd built with my own bare hands,

I dream of other hands, in another land;

Hands that had held mine, fire to my cold.

The embers glow on for a while,

Fighting against the unremembering of a cold winter's night.

(2)

Those other hands were naked, small;

Those hands that now belong to other lands,

To other, other hands.

Looking into the dying embers,

Before the gnawing dark, I remember

Another far-away December,

When those naked hands were with mine,

With false hopes and fingers, entwined.

Those fingers holding my ancient camera,

She'd caught me with my back to the Seine.

And we'd made love on the dark room's floor,

While photographs and negative thoughts developed.

Her eyes had caught desperately mine,

She'd cried out with tears that once had mattered.

She said, it was snowing, and you'd smiled,

And it was the smile that froze.