Gratuitous piece of poetry from a regular contributor, posted today in preparation for the upcoming January issue, which goes live at midnight PST tonight. Please enjoy!

Last Day of 2015

By Christopher Bernard

As in any other year
each day the sun rose, it set.
Mothers, friends, partners, lovers,
after laughing at us for longer than we cared to remember,
vanished overnight.
Where they used to be now is a hole in the air.

The monarch butterflies move in mists of wings
across the plains between Canada and Mexico,
rain takes a stroll across parched California,
and the moon glows down on everything on the earth.

The snow lines the pockets of the mountains with rebukes
as sharp as memories of kitchens on winter mornings.
A crocus breaks through the whiteness, a small pink fist,
sleek as rebellion, calm, deceptively delicate,

wagging in the wind.

Your partner is ice, hollyhocks, poppies.

Your lover is a fox hiding under a felled cedar.

Your mother is the wind.

Every day the sun set, it rose.

_____

Christopher Bernard is author of The Rose Shipwreck: Poems and Photographs. His poetry can be read at The Bog of St. Philinte.