For my son. (Poetry).

   The sky is gorged with snow. Our small room
   smells of forest, perfumed
   by anger and arms waving
   like bird wings.

   A tree rises from the floor, roots going
   down into the apartment below. They
   think it is a chandelier. We hear them curse
   the night when they click and click

   the switch. Your baby eyes are blue-black, mine
   are black-and-blue. Your tiny hands flap like
   moths when my hands
   lay you under the tree boughs gently as placing

   a word, naming time, calling moon. We two
   watch the tree's unadorned silence and evolve
   to marble, grit of ground lapis lazuli mixed with
   oil, gold leaf, frankincense

   and myrrh. Madonna and child, the old
   thing again, over and over,
   and roosting on the t.v. antennas, angels
   singing like fools on your first Xmas Eve.

Louise Murphy is a poet, novelist, and flautist living in Berkeley, California.