Christmas tree 

Louise Carson

Snow squalls tear at petals

                                                                                                                                                            and you can’t see this miracle

of intemperate growth in your own back yard

or remember the slanting lane

(vision of men in flat caps

walking to work past brick warehouses)

where the parent tree began one spring –

                                                                                                                                                            or the granary shed

made of sun-burned hemlock and tin

in front of which where it never was before

winter’s magnolia

transplanted from city shrunken leaf-nude

is dream – flowering

                                                                                                                                                            angels and glass candy woven in.