January 5th, 2014

My mother hasn't baked in 6 years and right now
she is thoughtfully staring into the bowl as the mixer hums
a song I've heard before but can't place. And while she
takes out the Christmas cookies she explains to me the
concept of "tyranny of the urgent" and how it relates to
procrasination and how "it's really just poor thinking and
you must figure it out and fix it" and before the butterflies
of everything I haven't yet done but must still rise
I help her make cranberry nut bread for our extended family
because she has strained both her wrists snowblowing and
because she is my mother. My little sister drifts by and eats
the ugly cookies and my father's coat, which I had worn earlier
to shovel the driveway, hangs over a chair, and our lives thaw
and begin to move again in a way like water through the garden.