The Meteorology of Loss
By Barbara Crooker

Every Christmas,
as my mailbox
is snowed in
with cards,
I shovel aside
the expected,
keep looking
for the friends
who don't write;
who've moved, don't
forward their mail,
or stop
sending cards;
somehow become lost.

My husband says
to think of the cards
I do receive:
kodaks of plum-
cheeked babies,
long, long letters;
to think of the friendships
that last, skein back
through years, fit
like old sweaters.

But I still think
of the friends
that drift away
like snowflakes,
their loss
a wind-
chill factor:
the cast off stitches,
the unwound yarn...

Congrats to Barbara!!! The above poem appears in the newly released book Christmas Blessings: Prayers and Poems to Celebrate the Season, collected by June Cotner, from Warner Books, $15.95 hardcover, ISBN #0-446-53100-6.