On every childhood Christmas Eve
a full moon rose
over new-sculptured snowdrifts.
A moon so silver-pure it put to shame
the ornaments on the fragrant little spruce
in our living room. We’d return to the tree
and its uncertain promises, but only after
we’d braved those drifts and the season’s frost
to join in caroling and good cheer. In memory
that necessary moon hangs up there
essential as the new-piled snow
or the gripping cold. I close my mind
to warmer Christmases, preferring to return
to snow that sculptured itself into white barriers,
we scarred with our footsteps
as we floundered across and through them.
Regardless, I call them up again
picture-perfect, the whole scene white
and snapping cold. I stubbornly ignore reality
to hang a moon for silver accent
above the ice-glossed scene
lest you not believe in our improbable joy
in a holiday that only underscored
our scarcities.
I hang a moon at its most silvered
above each Christmas memory
because without its glow
the scene fades too dark to recall.