DECEMBER 15

Bear on in singularity, proper,
it did. Through a glazed darkness,
rendering aspects of worldliness
all conflated, now struck
by winters' individualization of bare
things; branches succoring sky fully
themselves.

People puffed up, under roses
and fragile ceilings, warmed and dull
in fragments of personhood, blue
or black or shivering bare,
thin,

and exposed as yet unnoticed victims
of a seasonal haranguing,
the forces of frosted dead ground
hard around dawdling feet,
held,
as pins and nails, fast to terrain.
Stationary and ruddy, dried out
around lips and eyes cracked red
looking for motion, an annunciation.