Waiting \ December Gifts

Alan: Alone, alone, alone... lonely.

Waiting

                         for Nancy

I expected you home

before now.  All that long way

from Halifax, the roads icy maybe,

and empty at night.

When does concern become worry?

Worry take action?

I’ve enjoyed my time here,

alone with one dog and two cats,

reading Ryōkan, gentle sounds of the woodstove

like his breathing of pines under Mt. Kugami

or drip of dewy eaves in the bamboo grove,

so long ago.

Alone enough.

Now the dinner I made for the two of us,

uneaten, grows cold.

Nancy: A year of gifts, a life of gifts acknowledged.

December Gifts

The tide in the high marsh,

the low sun, slow to stand over the ridge,

the sea smoke . . . 

I went out wanting the year to turn,

and turned myself instead, turned back

to today, glad to have received

water, light, frost blooming on dry stems.