by Robin Stevens Payes
The perfect Christmas for those of us who do not celebrate
has always been a matinee followed by egg rolls and
stale fortune cookies cracking open to commemorate
this year of the wood snake; instead we take up a new tradition
setting out on a sunny holy day for cragels and lox
with everything and a heated debate about prediction markets
substituting for insurance (count me not a fan)
followed by a hike with son and daughter-in-law
Me scaling a tree for the first time in maybe five decades—my son guiding
each foothold, bark scratching palms, dogs barking beneath bare limbs
Son practicing shaky handstands on the hilltop’s brown and pebbled dirt—
we three for a time feeling as free as our tail-wagging dogs running along the lake
No one needing insurance this once—predictive or otherwise—
thank God or Spirit the Sun the Son or Mary or whoever you pray to
to stay healthy young-at-heart and carefree—we claimed it as
a joyous moment to celebrate family and love on this beautiful Earth
A sacred break beneath the promising glint of a star—our own
taking a Holy Time Out from the existential dread of being alive in 2025
Robin Stevens Payes is a Pushcart Prize–nominated poet, storyteller, and cultural steward whose work braids ancestral memory, science, myth, and moral imagination. She is the author of the YA time-travel adventure series Edge of Yesterday and creator of [re]member the world, a multi-genre project retrieving and reweaving the silenced history of her grandmother’s flight from Ukraine’s Pale of Settlement. Her poetry has appeared in The New Verse News, Dawn Horizons, East Sea Bards, Maryland Bards Poetry Reviews, and Reflections. She writes about creative ethics, generational healing, and cultural repair on her Substack, Releasing Memory.
