There is not one leaf left on that tree
on which a bird sits this Christmas morning,

the sky heavy with snow that never arrives,
the sun itself barely rising. In the overcast

nothingness, it’s easy to feel afraid,
overlooked by something that was meant

to endure. It’s difficult today to think
clearly through pain, some actual,

most imagined; future pain I try lamely
to prepare myself for by turning your voice

over in my mind, or imagining the day
I’ll no longer hug my father, his grip

tentative but desperate all the same.
At the café, a woman describes lilacs

in her garden. She is speaking of spring,
the life after this one. It will be spring,

I say over and over. I see how winter
is forbidding: it grows the heart
by lessening everything else and demands
that we keep trying. I am trying.

But oh, to understand us,
any one of us, and not to grieve?