Funerals for our Christmas tree siblings:
Pizzelle stump and feral cat hymn-- 

Did you ever love someone 
like a Christmas tree? 
So eager to die slowly as a spectacle
of lights and tinsel--
drink tea from your feet--
I understand my Christmas tree
like my brothers can't--
I listened to him when they shook
off his dead needles at the farm--
bound him in orange netting--
caged against 
the roof of the station wagon---
He was cold-- wanted to wear my mittens
and the yellow sweater left
over from a grandmother who
wrote love letters in pizzelles--
pizzelles like the stumps of trees
writing each year in a pressed arabesque--
We remember the trees names--
keep their stumps on the mantel--
thumb print tomb stones that smell
like forgetting-- 
He cried about his roots
growing numb-- lodged in the vertebrae
of the mountain that over looks
Kuztown: blue silhouette 
of a sleeping dragon--
breaths us
in barn bond fires--
We teach the freshly
cut tree about hot chocolate and family--
Oh Christmas trees who have
been our temporary siblings--
we've woken up and listened
to the weather channel sing
quiet Christmas songs before school days--
dressed you in our glass relics--
your arms to hold the fragile 
spheres formed only
from fragment memory--
candy canes plucked from your
hair and a string of lights
hot against your body to keep
you warm when the house
inhales winter from the windows--
It's harder to know that you're 
only visiting--
I've had so many Christmas tree siblings
and I think only I'm still mourning them--
me and the feral cats who
visit their corpses in the backyard--
sing hymns and clatter the bins
of diet coke cans like bells
we watch green turn orange--
turn skeleton-- turn bone--
turn into another passing of Christmas--
graceful like the death of 
my grandfather-- sleepy 
in a shawl of whiskey and night--
he still sits on the porch and smokes
cigars sometimes and watches
us decorate the Christmas tree
with ornaments reflecting fragments 
of his own memory--
He eats pizzelles and everyone
can think of a how warm it
felt to see our Christmas tree sibling
shake her hips on the eve-- 
only then could we forget about her dying--
I've had brothers and sisters of pine
and each one dances different on the eve--
some help us pour milk for Santa--
count carrots for the reindeer--
when we unplug the lights 
he sips more tea from his feet and stays
up to watch the floor pile with 
presents-- eats pizzelles 
and remembers Christmases that 
only the hand blown ornaments still do--
I know you'll be leaving again
and I know we'll cut off your stump
to remember you-- trust me 
I'll say your name in the morning
with the others-- I don't forget
you and I don't forget how you danced
and held the collected memory of
our family in your arms--
I won't forget how scared you were to
be cut and I'll remember your roots
being swallowed again into the soil--
you-- I call you brother
I call you sister 
I call you Christmas tree
and the feral cats and me will
sing your body into an ornament--
you refract with us-- 
hum quiet Christmas songs
and wait for Santa to eat us
both into crumbs. 
The feral cats ring the diet coke
cans-- and winter breaths gentle
in the windows.