by Julia Spicher Kasdorf
That town along the tracks where trains no longer stopped
had more bars than churches, but everyone kept Christmas
so on January 6th, a day most of us could not name,
volunteer firemen gathered at the playground to burn trees,
our own and those we begged from old neighbors. A branch
in each mittened hand, we’d drag them through the streets
to the place where men in helmets and thick, complicated coats
bent to bestow one new year’s dime for each brittle pine
they’d receive and hurl into the blaze. Now we might ask where
the mothers were—home, fixing dinner, fathers on the road—
but have I told this well enough for you to hear the conflagration,
hot and loud as a locomotive, for you to see the sparks spray
in great arrays against the night? There could have been a war
somewhere or mills closing, but those men—faces painted
with flames—did not resemble neighbors or uncles of school mates
that night. Walking, cold and tired, into the rest of winter,
a child could be light with dimes and lead tinsel in her pocket,
pine needles splintered in her snow boots’ fleece.
