December 28, 2025
Sunday

First Snow

That last day of the year
we hung upside down
on the world, air hot
as exhaust from the black
taxis of Buenos Aires,
and while roses in Parque Rosedal
opened their fragrant mouths
like a Palestrina choir,
the two of you ran to the window
calling, “Snow!”
From the windows
of all the office towers,
workers tossed the year’s
papers into the open air,
faces serious as ice.
December’s memos, the first
flakes, floated on the bitter wind;
windshield wipers plowed the drifts
of November’s announcements.
October fell, with the date and hour
of a funeral, then September,
August, the grey decisions
of July, a list
of those to let go, jealous tangos
of June and May set free
into the azure sky.
We walked the Avenida
in that bright disorder,
the neatly tied loose ends
flung open, the hoary edges of graphs
flaming in the sun.
—Pamela Porter, b. 1956, Canadian novelist and poet
from The Intelligence of Animals (used without permission, alas)

It’s not the last day of the year, it’s the third day of my new year, but I do indeed feel upside down on the world. The poem above astonished me this morning. It appeared on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac in 2008 and landed in my inbox in the daily email I get offering an archived poem, since he no longer publishes fresh material. It’s the only time Keillor featured Pamela Porter, and this poem is unavailable elsewhere. So I grabbed it, for the imagery, for the catalogue of a whole year’s worth of office papers sent flying out of windows, newest to oldest, for its direct address to her twin sons, who likely will not remember the Christmas they spent in Argentina.

I’m upside down in the world tonight only metaphorically. Today in the Common Lectionary it’s the Feast of the Holy Family. My habitual devotional, Pray as You Go, used the Gospel for today, Matthew 2:13-23. The lesson concentrated on Joseph’s obedience to the angel that comes to him in a dream, emphasizing the unpreparedness of the journey he is being called to. But they skipped over vss. 16-18. Although it’s the Feast of the Holy Family now, this Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s Day used to be dedicated to remembering the slaughter of the Holy Innocents.

My pastor this morning did not skip that part. She read it in her soft but unwavering voice, and began her message with, “The magical moments are over.” This gospel is all about fleeing on a moment’s notice, able to take only what can be carried, seeking sanctuary. Jennifer has worked for a number of years as a missionary and community organizer in Guatemala, establishing a school for girls and overseeing modern improvements to the infrastructure of the village she served. She’s known people, mostly women, who have arrived with nothing but their frightened children and the last bit of medicine they could grab as they ran for their lives.

I am not in any current immediate danger of losing everything I have, but many in my community and in the wider world of my nation are, either from racial strife, poverty, health crises, domestic violence. Tonight I made the decision to stop reading the 500 pages of self-centered musings that comprised most of what I chose to record for 2025. I’m putting it all in a sturdy carton that will go in the basement (I’m not ready to turn it into confetti, yet), and moving forward. There is work to be done. I can’t wield a hammer at a shelter that needs a new roof, but I can pray, protest, assemble meals at a feeding center, call the leaders of my local and national government to task.

And write about it.