Solstice Eve

Solstice eve:
Terry’s just finishing up her Tolstoy book
her corner of the Twitterverse sighs like a sleeping bear
and lays its hashtags to a well-earned winter’s rest

Solstice eve:
semester’s end, and my boy lolls in our gorilla nest
jacked into Twitch, all its blessed, relentless content
a comfort fugue, fuel for his frying-pan brain

Solstice eve:
I’ve counted up the minds I’ve mainlined into mine this year
all the romances, mysteries, fantasies, space operas, all that time
and all these worlds that others built which I have dwelt in

Solstice eve:
I think of the floorboards I will never clean, what I’ve let go
what failures I must set my shoulder against, the scale on the bathroom tile,
the chart on the wall, the list I am always rewriting, never finishing

Solstice eve:
Omicron is among us, and my mother’s coming soon
my best friend will arrive to rest here after her booster
I will make chicken soup with dumplings; I will feed her

Solstice eve:
it’s colder, darker, and I’m full of rosy slumber
barefoot, and my hair turned winter-umber
reading of rare December tornadoes–but where is the snow?