Christmas Eve is a hive of frustration.

Snowstorms in Denver or endangered birds

    nesting in Chicago—reasons. Bags all

checked thru. Feliz Navidad card from her

    domestic worker (more a friend really)

         in the carry-on. Phone dead but nothing

(now that there is something) to text. Cannot

    even in the anxiety form a

complete thought. She was going back any-

    way—wasn’t she?—with good reports, making

         good money with good friends. Going back now,

more a child than ever, caught out despite

    having practiced off and on now and then



for the eventualities of ill-

    ness, then (probably) more illness and the

         non-alternatives that precede the deaths

of others.

              Runways haze into the sun-

    set.

         If she presses against the plate glass,

she might see the ocean. Almost, she thinks,

    the panic cascading, almost made it.