“It’s odd weather for Christmas in these parts,”
he said to his cousin, an old man near his own age,
whom he hadn’t seen In years, a guest for the holiday.
“We’re used to snow,” he went on, climbing the hill,
pointing out rocks and roots in the woodsy terrain,
“Not this fifty degrees and rain stuff.”
They pause to catch their breath and look around.
“I like the snow. It pretties things up a bit.
Especially now that everybody will be taking
down their Christmas lights. It gets so dull
and seems so gray–don’t you think– without
the Christmas lights and snow?”
“Nah,” the cousin says. “I just pretend I woke
up on a different planet. And I’m all curious,
trying to figure out what I’m seeing.
Just now, for instance, I glanced over there.”
His finger points at a clump of green moss
that’s climbing the remains of a cinder block wall.
“See? See? It’s a piney forest of some kind
stretching up into a midnight sky.
But there are no stars. Maybe it’s the
moon lighting up the trees. What do you think?”
The first old guy squats down, peering at the moss
from eye level. “I see stars,” he says. “They’re dull,
but I see them.” He’s looking hard at it now.
“Or maybe,” he says, caught unawares in the game,
“it’s just a different atmosphere
that doesn’t bounce back light like ours. ”
The visiting cousin grins. He sees that he caught
his childhood pal, snatched him right out of his world.
“No! I know what it is!” he says, letting his old friend
in on the joke. “It’s moss growing on an old wall,
putting on a show for us two old fools.”
And they laugh and climb on, Christmas lights
inside them that they have no intention
of ever taking down.