That's OKay!

We are unintentional
harbingers
of Christmas.  Spirit
hangs on hungry limbs,
tinsel, light, and glass.
You bejewel me.
with the joys
of your expectations.

You decorate
my skeleton bare.
"I like it,"  I admit
(these old traditions) even
though I know
there is a burden
in the weight
of your love.

You stand so close.

You have become
my spine.  And when I fear
the trembling
frame, the shivering
of your timbers
I fast collapse
into anxieties
I never knew before
this harvest.

You are
a lumberjack
enamored of mass
of size
of the hardness
of some, of certain
wood...  I to be
a lumberjack
enamored of mas-
culinity and lies?

Barely heard and hardly
understood, I say something
in my way, softly,

"The day
when we have cleared
this forest what
we have entangled--
our stand
--must remain intact."

I mean this.

root encircling root
nerve swirling with nerve
spine entwined with spine
tied together
each of us
in our red plaid
shirts, in the arms
of green conifers
under the blue
of a December
sky's promises.