Narcissus at Christmas
       

Every year at Christmas my knee hurts
as I curse the crowds I have to wade through
to get her a gift of jewelry.

Each year she buys a grand narcissus
and places it so that its papery face
leans toward the glass and fumes.

Miraculous how it sprouts from a bed
of white rocks, how it exudes
the most cloysome scent of the season.

For a moment she frets
it's her menstruation she smells
instead of effluvium

from this creamy bloom.
But soon at midnight mass
she'll become a little girl

among carols and candles
and altar boys swinging incense.
I won't disturb her reverie

to say her monthly visitor
is a miracle
greater than the myth

of virgin birth.
She could dismiss such words
from me as a man,

but whose body is it
that aches and generates
the smell and the mess

if not the body of th is blue Earth
facing the dark of the year,
holding tight fists of tulips

in underground cold.
Now the jeweler with the turban
like a great narcissus bulb,

so solicitous in my purchase
of her necklace, was a Sikh
for whom Christmas means

brisk business.
Still, if it makes us partake
in rituals of generosity,

if I hide in a smile
the grimace of winter in my knee,
if I speak kindly to strangers

and breathe deeply
in the crush of Christmas traffic,
what might this body teach me?

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Copyright © 2019 Donald Levering All rights reserved
from Previous Lives
Red Mountain Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission