Shooting through the pinpricked blackness
of Southern Ontario at Christmas time
is like catching nature in an instant
of despair. A dusty velvet curtain
smothers the sky; the earth teeters
uncertain on its axis; the scraggly trees,
or what you can make out of them,
look uprooted, remind you of your rough uncle
Carl, the way his nosehairs stuck out,
and of the drunken songs
of frozen cowboys. We are here,
or so the arrow says, more concerned
with rotations per minute than rotations
per millenium. And yet the farmers here
mark out the outline of the farmhouse,
the barn, the fence, the fruit tree,
with tiny yellow bulbs, while the sky
watches, slowly mapping itself out,
remembering the precise location
of each point of light.

- Dec 22, 2002