Feast Day

The town by the hundreds
sweetens the frozen lake
with pine streamers and berries.

One hundred skaters in blue
Christmas scarves pencil in
zig-zag shadows above the fish,

drive the fins, silver and gill,
herd by herd, to the openings
where the heads gulp out

into the fresh air, nets
and clubs and a velvet
children's choir in one

hundred green and gold
collars. Willows cut
the wind for a baton,

oak shrugs off snow
and slides easily, winter
to winter, one hundred

long tables across
the ice, and the faces
of ancestors condensing

through the cold breath
chair to chair,
platter after platter

steaming vinegar and white
with ribbons of steak, day
by day, the clouds closing

sharply, lined back and forth
with light by the slice, uncut
amethysts by the hundreds.

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Copyright © 2011 James Doyle All rights reserved
from Cave Wall
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission