Wilderness Interface Zone

She could smell the season on him.  Summers
he came through the door redolent of horses
and wild mint; winters, copper and ice.
Metallic and snow-clean, he cooled the house.
She thought of him as a tree at the end
of Earth, where seasons found their dearest
canvas and put upon him, each, its best
adornment. Behind him now, feathers
of snow bounced against black glass.
The household breath smelled of her bread.
Brown shadows guttered on the wall
while firelight basted lintel beams
in honeyed tincture.  She moved inside
her winter wools, wandering the scene
that was to be Christmas—her part of it—
satisfied, then drifted to
his side to watch him carve. His hands
cut down along the bony back
of a traveler’s horse, freeing it
to air. The needled Yule tree, fresh-felled
and damp still from the forest,
shook out its musk.  Under the lowest
limb, a white wood stable shone,
shorn from pine, a foot high and two
Wide.  Inside, animals born
of the old cherry tree and a vigorous
child of wild cedar with whittled eyes
that looked like two small fishes on
his face. The holy pair was hemlock,
or some other wood, pale beside
the cedar, lighter than the yellow
tinted cherry that flared the donkey’s
nostrils, curled the wool on the sheep’s
flanks, bent the cattle’s necks
and swayed their backs.  He handed her
the horse and said, “Cherry’s stubborn
Enough wood, though some have cut
Stallions from stone.”  She put it down.
Its four feet settled perfectly.
“What else will you make?” She asked, picking
up the child. “An angel of
that tamarack, a star,” he said,
taking the wooden infant from
her hands and twirling it between
a work-scored thumb and finger.
“But not tonight.” She rose and kissed
his hair.  “Well, to bed with me.
Will you see to the fire?”  He nodded.
She walked into bronzing shadows.

He stood to see the stable from
above.  The pine gleamed rough and white
like roasted fowl, the figures’ polished
grains swirled, recalling river sand.
The child was round and red, as healthy
newborns are.  Cedar and spruce
thickened the room.  He fell to heavy
thought. “Since I made these will I
prophesy.” The tree behind,
dark and spangled, spread a woodland
presence.  Beside the tree the amber
of the grate fire splintered, spilling heat
into the room.  “Though you come
like manna on the grass with voice
to raise the dead among us, we
will not ask, ‘What is it?’ as before.
No. We’ll cleave to Now, and though
you say ‘I am all that’s made
alive; if a man believe in me,
though he is dead, my body
shall unbind his, he shall live,’
we will not think to ask, ‘Will you raise
my dead?  Will you unwind my shroud?’
No, we’ll lament, ‘Had you been here,
you could have changed it all.’ We
will not notice that you are and that
You have—not cry, ‘Speak!  And earth
will yield hyacinths of spring, the dead.’”

He half-woke and set aromas chanting.
“Loaves, loves, and judgment.”  He stirred the coals.
“’Twill be the loaves distracting us.
We’ve got no eyes to see beyond
our flesh or yours, forgotten how
to ask, ‘What is it?’ and so be drawn
into the question of God.”
He tossed
the cedar shavings, cherry, hemlock
all, onto the coals.  The flakes of wood
flared against the cobbles, embers popped.

Next year, mahogany for the magi;
he’d carve them like the chessmen he saw
once in a city museum, gaunt
and stag-like, hesitant, stalking kings
to the manger. He spread the fire’s warm leavings
on the hearth, he turned, he walked
through the door, the only part of night
Not yet grown black and solid.