Poem at Christmas (for Jessica)

I take you, my daughter, to get your cut head stitched up.

The sun, a welder of prisms, reshapes the snow.
Blue rivers are running on asphalt,
together flow from left to right on the road.
Reflected light has in it the makings of torture,
a fired knife
for opening eyeballs wide enough
to make colors run.

I am overcome by the violence, don't want to hear,
don't want to see hawks seeking prey,
don't want to say I don't want to hold your hands,
don't want to know that blood in substance is thin,
has no skin to change,
has no way to step out, be made clean,
and step back again.

What the three words mean is against me: blood
is a chain and the only animal thing that can eat the air.

You anoint the stairs with your blood,
spill it on the walk like a priest flicking holy water,
leave behind a trail like a dogwood in May that’s gone walking,
spread about you blooms like a florist
who has moved his rooms and will advertise.

Some veterans have seen such poppies,
some magicians runes
that were written in ink this hue.
As for you,
you unroll your red scroll for the nurse who attends your pain.