Iowa Writes
ROBERT DANA Taking Down the Christmas Lights
Our neighborhood's gone dark again, all its Christmas lights down now. We unclipped from our eaves, two weeks ago in the unseasonable, late December warm, thirty yards of blue icicles, accordioning them into fist-sized bundles, securing them with green plastic ties, the kind meant for staking up garden plants in summer, then packing them neatly in a box marked Outside. Our P-E-A-C-E sign with its mad racing combinations and slow fade- out-fade-in hangs blankly green once again for another whole year with the tools in the garage: crowbar, loppers and pruners, step ladder.
Our neighborhood's gone dark again, all its Christmas lights down now. We unclipped from our eaves, two weeks ago in the unseasonable, late December warm, thirty yards of blue icicles, accordioning them into fist-sized bundles, securing them with green plastic ties, the kind meant for staking up garden plants in summer, then packing them neatly in a box marked Outside. Our P-E-A-C-E sign with its mad racing combinations and slow fade- out-fade-in hangs blankly green once again for another whole year with the tools in the garage: crowbar, loppers and pruners, step ladder. And tonight, the season at last grown wintry, knuckles cracking with cold, my wife coils up snaking extension cords and dismantles our white, skeletal, antlered reindeer, Horatio, —he of the moving head—last and best of show, folding him down and packing his separate parts into his proper carton for storage in the basement, along with boxes of bulbs, strings of lights, tree ornaments, some with family histories. And the two small, robin sized, feathered birds, one red, one white, that top our tree as shining spikes and stars and archangels do others'— the one descending, the other rising.
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About Iowa Writes
Since 2006, Iowa Writes has featured the work of Iowa-identified writers (whether they have Iowa roots or live here now) and work published by Iowa journals and publishers on The Daily Palette. Iowa Writes features poetry, fiction, or nonfiction twice a week on the Palette.
In November of 2008, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated Iowa City, Iowa, the world's third City of Literature, making the community part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.
Iowa City has joined Edinburgh, Scotland and Melbourne, Australia as UNESCO Cities of Literature.
Find out more about submitting by contacting iowa-writes@uiowa.edu
ROBERT DANA Robert Dana is Poet Laureate of Iowa. |
This page was first displayed on April 27, 2006
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