Fun with Altoid Tins!

           Orion’s Belt

I watch from beneath the grape arbor

half hidden among the purples

and the moon’s dappled shadows.

The big roll-away bed floats on the lawn

like a boat moored to this warm blue night.

Your summer-brown gangle of skinny limbs

are pinned beneath starched sheets

and heavy quilts 

pieced from the uncles’ dungarees. 

Grandma has heard your prayers and tucked you tight 

and now sits silent on the bed’s edge

dangling her heavy black shoes 

into the soft and liquid dark.

Your freckled face shines with the moon. 

You count the stars in Orion’s belt

like the incantation of the cricket chorus

to fix the spell.

We three witness—you and Grandma and I.

We smell the heat rise off the grass

  and the turned earth in its careful rows

We hear the orchard’s woody, whispered hymn

And in the silvered pasture, 

the muted stirring of the lambs.

In the silvered garden,

the stretching of the stalks and stems.

And I watch

there under the tangle of tendrilled vines.

The soft flutter of grape leaves

like a wing just brushing my cheek.

                      

And tonight--this winter midnight--

as that same line of fierce and blazing stars

lace the crust of frost on the window glass,

All the icy stillnesses

dome my gentle room like a crystal ball.

Under soft down 

held tight and warm in my husband’s arms,

all my children grown and good

and safely nuzzled in their far off beds,

I listen to the creaks and groans

of these beloved walls

And to the craggy breathing

of the dog dreaming on the rug.

And you sit watching me this time.

You are there

cross-legged by my feet

next to the purring cat.

Your smiling freckled face-- 

Your knowing freckled face

Hangs in the air

like frozen breath.