Poets’ Corner: David Feela for Xmas

22 Dec Poets’ Corner: David Feela for Xmas

Every Christmas is a palimpsest for the one that came before and the one before and so on back. Memories of Xmases past are as persistent as Santa myths– and as unavoidable as carols, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” and telemarketers. One of our favorite writer-poets and regular contributor to Telluride Inside… and Out, David Feela, pulled this one out of a neatly wrapped box. 

In Praise of Insulation

The roof, shed of its snowpack,
gathers the sun’s heat again.

Upstairs under the shingles
the attic warms while

outside the temperature
hasn’t climbed above freezing.

On such a day I could lift
from this mausoleum of dusty boxes

my dimmest memories and hold them
under the glare of a bare bulb

but it has all been so neatly packed away.
To open one box would only

lead to another, and what is the past
if not an accumulation of things we

can not touch wrapped up in the feeling
that we also can not let them go.