By Maggie Sawkins, Star & Crescent’s Poetry Editor.
The fir cone I picked from a Corsican forest,
carried across an ocean
nestled between balls of socks, has fallen
from the grate and rests
where it meets my gaze
as I pose upside down in my daily practice.
I notice how it makes the perfect mandala,
its curved wooden petals
its skirt of hearts
and in the moment after chanting,
my thoughts thin and clear as tinsel,
I wonder how, each year
in the dim days before Christmas,
I have the gall to consider spraying it gold.
