Crazy Shapes and Impossible Colors

Subject: cat
From: Ted_Burke
Date: Sep 11 2006 2:54AM

Crazy Shapes and Impossible Colors

We take a hard look as
each comes into the house

still breathing, no bullet holes,
no signs of rigor, the skin a hail pink,

and everyone gets a hug, a handshake,
are told to make themselves a drink while
the turkey finishes cooking in its own juices,

somehow the year feels
lighter than it seemed,
less like overcoat pockets lined
with lead weights and rocks

and more a windbreaker that lets the
latest wind from up the canyon
a bone chill with
each fingering gust,

most of us are still here,
our tales have been

added too, our families
have gained more
than we've lost,

small kids jump
on the beds

where the coats are laid,
investigate alien closets and

their landscape of dress shoes in
crazy shapes and impossible colors,

someone is already impossibly loaded,
stewed in his juices,

baked with his smoke,
hand gestures that speak

too loud of love
that never dies when

it's a good man
with a woman at his side,

dinner comes ten minutes late
and just in the nick of time,
the world has seldom been this delicious,

Sarah Vaughn sings a blues
that is the color of every night sky.

http://fray.slate.com/?id=3936&m=18152234