Out of the packed train comes a horizontal tree, pine
needles poking through tight

plastic wrap. She’s wearing
a raincoat and a frown, the blue spruce

hugged in her strong arms like a Roman battering ram.
Commuters step aside, all sighs and clucks.

This woman loves someone enough
to bring them Christmas on the subway, wrestle

a tree twice her height through tongue-
sucking rush-hour crowds.

The sharp holiday
scent of pine enlivens the last car of the C train,

trails her to the 50th Street escalator,
where she juggles the pungent

tree on her hip, ascending.

©2006, Jackie Sheeler

Jackie Sheeler is an award-winning poet, founder of Poetz.com & the Pink Pony reading series in Manhattan, former New York correspondent for the About Poetry Museletter, and the voice fueling Talk Engine.

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