The Black Cat, December, c. 1890-1900
Color print, 30 x 24 cm
Digital image courtesy of the Library of Congress
With each gust the angel’s trumpet tips
higher. A crazed heralding. Perhaps how
all of us should live. To no one in particular
a neighbor declares his intention to take down
his Christmas lights. And doesn’t. Resistance
comes in many forms. The sidewalks have become
rivers of ice and not the Joni Mitchell kind. Hygge
is over and now the season is about survival
and small, chubby mammals, plain and simple.
In winter any small contact is a chance to say,
Stay safe! A chance to call out to a fellow
human. The neighbor’s cats, entire bodies
of black mane, take the narrowest pathways
to everywhere. Some deity has bestowed on them
the gift of turning up their noses at the cold.
In the rare moment of thaw, we humans
gather in the street, trade tips on traction
and reviving stale baguettes, return to the question
of what to do with the empty stucco church
where where what’s his name? The Good Pope?
once stood. Vines grow up its pitted walls and
small unseemly deals are made beneath the portico.
It will go to condos, say we neighbors, shaking
our heads and clucking in the way of the best resident
expert. Overhead, squirrels, the unacknowledged
local gods, grace tired electrical wires, mouths
full with our finished celebrations, with the extra
calories that might let us sleep these months
entirely away, were we not such social creatures.