Cold, cold, cold,
frigid, trapped Christmas: his friends
have sent him cards with angels on them.
They haunt the window ledge, golden.

Outside, ice imprisons the streets.
I see the clear delineation
between what's frozen and what escapes:
no slight wet border, no thawing by day.
It fell as ice, as ice it lies
in smooth, dangerous shapes.

From the hospital window he saw angels.
They seemed to glory in single digits,
broken sun, bad tidings.
They were out in record numbers.
Drugs for the dying: he saw angels
dancing on the air outside.

Lights on in the opposite wing,
snowfall blown against gravity:
the consubstantiation of angels.
How they're formed, like art: it's all
in how we see, and then the declaring.
All different, nothing changed.

Christmas angels holding trumpets,
face-front in their cardboard ranks.
Are they like these? I want to know.
He can't speak, but shakes his head,
his fingers flutter, gesture: plenitude,
lovelier. Saying let me go.

I look out the window too,
and hear his mother whisper the answer
to each mittened and hushed-voiced visitor:

Bad, bad, bad.