The Wind Wakes the Child

A runty young four-point buck, all alone, browses the ground under the fruit trees for anything left over by early December. A pile of cardboard and detritus burns orange and smoke from a barrel. A plug of volcanic lava cone shoulders a new scrim of snow, through which you can still glimpse time moving in pantomime whenever the darkness shines.

One family (one mother, one father, one daughter) play one more game of letters, tiles scattered around the dining table, strategies and scribbled drawings on scrap paper interrupted by small squabbles over who will play outside, who will play inside, and who is willing to collect the balloons. One low morning glare of white-gold desert light flares on their faces, one by one, to paint them all as angels around their tabletop Christmas tree.

The fastest poet in the west fails to draw on the sun that shoots him a last glance from the cliffs until morning. The best intentions to be better prepared tomorrow forget that it's already today. Today is your birthday. The wind wakes the child.