David Moolten

                                     For Shira

Shoppers slouch towards the manger

a train in a store window runs circles around

in Bethlehem, PA. Okay, you stand in line too,

and in the bitter autumn mildness 

that is the climate of the whole planet,

the ruined mills rusting, the skies not clean

so much as stripped of brutal, lovely smoke,

gone too the snows of childhood

pure as your mother’s tablecloth.

Sudden and overdue is how change arrives,

layoffs and layaway, waiting hours

to stampede the aisles like track lanes,

epiphany not a shaky headlamp,

just the SOB who lunges for the last

zombie apocalypse playset turning

into your neighbor. Thank God he lets go.

Except, so do you, thoughtless considering

damn it, you swore to the kid at home.

Then Santa taps your shoulder like a thief

in the night back from his Vendomat break,

holding another. You hug a toy made overseas

with child labor like when you were a kid,

no saving this world, but $11.50,

consoled almost as good as grateful.