BETWEEN CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR

Between Christmas and New Year

there is practically nothing.

It can almost be

in an ordinary, black handbag

of the kind midwives use

my mother used to say.

But I don’t know if that sort of logic

is applicable nowadays.

It doesn’t matter if you forget the bag.

There’s nobody, after all, who wants to have it.

Next year at the same time it’s there again

on the bench on the platform.

Nobody sits down next to it.

That’s the way it is between Christmas and New Year.

It’s a bit different, of course,

if it’s just snowed

and there’s a little snow on the top of the bag

and you can imagine

a train pulling in

out of the twilight.

That, then, is what the bag looks like.

It’s yours. Take it!

My mother won’t let on.

johnirons