Holy days sit around my life
like a circle of aunts, clucking
and singing, cutting chickens
and endlessly speaking. And the children
dancing through the kitchen, pulling fistfuls
of hair or sugar or cards from cabinets
and closets. Somewhere on earth it’s always a holiday
and the name sits on the time, heavily
as a smell of cardamom in the air,
as light on water. Someone bellows a song,
someone holds a glass of tea
poured over sugar cubes,
and while we fill our walls
with a queue of calendars pale as a snow
the sun recalls itself to us slowly
burning its name into the hills.