For the Neighbor at Christmas

On Christmas day you show me how to seed a pomegranate 

to split it down the center and 

pluck out the pulpy red eyes with a fork.

I pile them on the cutting board, their white pupils watching as we talk about 

music, bicycles, the liberal arts 

and what passes for pleasantries between strangers.

I think our degrees are in optimism, the

ability to see the gilded edges around anything, even 

a Christmas in this drafty old house on the corner of our next lives. 

 

You lent me your book of poems by Raymond Carver 

dog-eared with little blue x’s by the ones you liked.

I’m reading the poems but more often 

reading you, 

decoding your cipher. 

I scan the pages

for corners bent by your careful folding through the 

yellowed valley of the page looking for the elusive x:

a roadmap for hope.