GIVE A POEM THIS CHRISTMAS

Now that Bay Street and Main Street are miserably conjoined, and Christmas is only one month away, I'd like to share my favourite gift idea with you.

Give like a kid. The people you love only want to know the ways in which you feel for them; and poetry is perfect.

I gift poems all year, to friends, to people who need affirmation, to those who deserve thanks and, and, and...

Ever since I became best friends with the Medieval Japanese novelist Lady Murasaki, who accorded with the Japanese custom of gifting friends and lovers with poems on auspicious occasions, I have searched for beautiful paper and ink, concentrating on presentation.

Cut and paste is a great therapeutic activity for a mind worker.

This Christmas, my poem is accompanied by a photograph of our angel band, Mister Heavy Metal, our dancing, channeling the stars of stage and screen angel, the guitar playing, songwriting angel, who draws like Raphael, and our little putta, Miss Isabel Ringing.

We send you all good wishes.

Angel Band

The most pleasant miracle
of the Rainforest is Angel
Bands who surprise us at night,
bringing their sweet clamour
& Good News, the enthusiasm
of children. Our angels come
and go so quickly, we are
afraid to breathe in case they
are weightless as dreams; even
though we know our breath
defies gravity & holds them
in the firmament long enough
for our eyes to adjust to the
brilliance they bring with them.

When the angel band scatters like
down, the holy narratives of our
sleep, they leave bright holes in
the air that fill the sky with music.