Saint Stephen’s Day with the Griffins

for Janet and Christopher Half-eagle, half-lion, the fabulous animal struts, saber-clawed but saintly, a candlewicked ornament dangling from our rickety sugar pine. Butternut pudding in our bellies. His reindeer and sleigh hurried here and gone—thank God for us childless folks. Almost:   the lovelocked Griffins on the sofa, sockfooted, hearing gas and a kiddy heart in her tummy— a life more imaginary than real, though one is dazzled by gold that fills the egg unbroken. We feed her crumpets and listen again: The lamb’s a hungry bugger, even snug from earth’s imponderable fury. Tomorrow, in a spurt by jet I’m home. Clumsy as a puppy I’ll scale the flightstairs into the nosecone, luggage banging at my sides, enter the egg- shaped cabin and await the infrared climb toward space. Tell me one thing true? If I could count the way things slip from us: Mother’s fur gloves, Sunday’s benediction, the dead gone before us, love’s rambler on the prairie—all displaced as we buckle in our shuttle, jetbound on a screaming runway, gravity pulling at us castaways, more mammal than bird, subtle leg-weary griffins made manifest, arrowing towards home. How do we ignore it: the attenuated being of our age, the bittersweet collapse of dominoes mooned around our pine? Withered with hatred from his quarter, Saint Stephen even at death rolled mercifully over in high holiness. Sonless, wifeless, nine thousand feet from land, I roll the lozenge on my tongue, youthful habit for ache of any kind, parting a survivor (Wait!), love rescuing me from the fringe.