A Plane Awaits
Her laughing kids! Was that the phone she heard?
She wakes; the Christmas vision flees her head.
They’re gone - her nest of children! And that bird
who’d built a nest with her has snuck from bed.
He's on the phone. She hears his lowered voice
saying, “Dear, I’m sorry we’re apart.”
She knows the time has come to make the choice-
to stay or go. . . and faster pounds her heart.
She takes two bags she’d packed two weeks ago
and places underneath the tree a note,
the one she wrote the day there came first snow
of winter when she’d run without a coat
and screamed into a night that streamed white tears.
A plane awaits; she leaves lost love and fear.
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