1

The doorbell rings. The guests arrive.
He leads them in, as they all beat
That mythic winter into mats
Upon the threshold of a holiday.
And so they start to joke and chuckle,
removing hats
Gloves, coats, and colored Christmas scarves
Amid the welcomes and the hugs
Each for each one of the five,
Old friends from warmer days.

They sit near the fireplace
Sipping mugs of steaming tea, telling
Stories of their changing stories
(The pure-hearted and heated talk
of budding intellectuals)
By their Platonic Christmas tree.
One is burying philosophy in layered footnotes – the angry sort.
Another abstracts algebra, while two heal wounds,
though different kinds
And then there is singing Julia.

The talk strays to the winter host
He has done some work abroad, it seems.
Come home to find his father dead
And so restored this emptied house,
Breathed new life between the cheerful walls
Painted shades of blue and green.

The party (cooled), now re-alights
As there are candles, then there is caroling.
The unique and charming caroling
Of wine-warmed faces and over-blinking eyes
- Melody of distant friends and hearts
All laughing in an emerald room.

He had
forgotten human company; the stealing smile that coils around
the beating heart of man was she;
Julia (he had forgotten) – she,
who slinked out of his graying life
and slinks into his colored house
this evening once
and singly.

She shifts her neck, inclines to smile
a queer smile towards the winter host
a smile that sieges winter hearts
only once the sun has set.
He curves his lips, but soon begins
to smile as older pictures smile.
The singing picks up once again
The wine swings round once again
Life, he had
forgotten
life.

2

Beyond the foggy window panes
The snow advances, slowly sets upon
The graying hills about the house,
The night (indifferent) stirs itself
To daub a smokeless evening sky
A world of ashen winter hues.
As with the seasons, there is the knowledge that
This too will flicker, and so it was
That the clocks announced
the latening hour.
Julia is now to leave.

3

They begin the fuss for gloves and scarves
Murmurs of “Oh it’s very late,”
they recommence reluctantly
The button-labor of stiffened jackets.
He breaths sharply, but there are hands to shake
(She is lacing thin boots about her elfin feet)
And then the over-done goodbyes
which echo warmly, then retreat.

The door shuts out the evening breeze
The cheap wicks flicker weakly, once.
He pauses, calls to mind the mind
That coiled snake-like through the house
Among the warm light of softened Christmas candles
Set with holly, pine and mistletoe
And now he moves to sit behind
the saturnine piano.

It would seem that all the guests have gone
back to their lives – Ah, but the Host has found
a trail of Julia's perfume
Coiling snake-like from the far salon.
He smiles, and plays; his music sounds
like laughter from an emerald room.