by Patrice M. Wilson

Several nights before Christmas
and the drunken violins are jigging out
their fa-la-las. I lag behind as if I had ordered
lackluster light, a gray world, 
no room for glee though the music
makes merry—flutes now, and cellos
with festive harmonies.

These the world can churn out
like the heart’s everlasting pulses,
but under the music’s skin
lie skeins of criss-crossing capillaries
and vessels, too complicated and delicate
to last, fragile fleshly webs
that measure music by a different beat.

Despite all this, another night will sing itself in
’til the year’s last highlights soften
into the quotidian. Those two musics
will stay, one outside the middle of us,
one that kindles a new sun each morning
when we the faithful come to do 
whatever we must, dance 
with small steps to flutes with
upscale stops, to violins with light
thin chords, and then the bass cellos’
deep, wide hum.

From the chapbook Hues of Darkness, Hues of Light by Patrice M. Wilson

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Born Catholic in Newark NJ, raised in Catholic schools, Patrice M. Wilson has a PhD in English from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, having earned her MA there and her BA at the University of Maryland, College Park. She was editor of the very fine Hawaii Pacific Review for 16 years while teaching at Hawaii Pacific University. She has three chapbooks of poetry with Finishing Line Press, and one full-length poetry collection with Christian publisher eLectio Publishing. Dr. Wilson recently spent five years in the cloistered Carmelite monastery in Kaneohe, HI. She is now a retired professor living in Mililani, Oahu, HI.