A Gift

Beneath a simple, lit tree on a wide couch

flanked by dogs, I sleep in the home

of my grown sons and their father.

In the dark morning, after he starts

his car now brushed of fresh snow,

waiting to carry him over icy roads

to the shop basement where he tunes skis—

the old way, he assures guests, in the lineage

of his father, born of mountains—my baby,

twenty now, hands me a crinkly package

wrapped in last year’s salvaged snowmen print.

Both of us smile in anticipation. Tugging

at tape, I unfold the seam to reveal

the indigo coat he bought me for the hill

where our family once refound itself, healed,

whole. We revel in it, this moment a son

first clothes his mother against a chill,

one still within his nascent, gracious control.