New Year’s Eve after the Holiday Away – a poem by Joan Bernard

New Year’s Eve after the Holiday Away


The intermittent bark
of the collie next door,
Alexa playing Dvorak, Mahler.

Her takeout order called in:
Chicken Marsala.
The Chianti open and breathing.

For dessert, the easy chair.
Louise Erdrich’s 
“The Night Watchman”
waits on the end table.

Enter now the thermostat,
dipping from 68 to 60 to 55 to 49.

Enter her furnace ––
1987’s ironman without a pulse ––
her blood pressure, sole heat source.

Enter the emergency technician
just arrived from the heating company.
His clangs in the basement nailing
dollar signs on the cold walls.

Enter Martha, sister of Mary,
approaching from a corner
out of Luke’s gospel,*
apron speckled with flour,
a loaf still in the oven.
Solo cook, dishwasher,
Martha nods, knowing 

this woman lacks the company
of the Divine in the flesh.
Knows this woman
can’t hear Him telling her
none of this will matter.
	    	
*Luke 10:38-42	

Joan Bernard’s poetry has been published in The Main Street Rag, the Aurorean, Connecticut River Review, The North American Review, and others.She lives in Boston, MA and Thompson, CT.