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Christmas Between Colfax and Bloomer

Image for Christmas Between Colfax and Bloomer

A poem by Thomas R. Smith

The heavy dairy farms hold down the white
tablecloth of Wisconsin. Afternoon
sunlight searches past silos into the
birch groves. When the world disappoints, I still
do what I've always done--look inward to
the secret source. So much richness--plain wood
walls of corncribs enclosing gold darkness!

Originally published in Winter Hours, by Thomas R. Smith, Red Dragonfly Press, MN, 2005.
www.reddragonflypress.org. Reprinted with permission.

Copyright Thomas R. Smith

Photo of Thomas R. Smith

Thomas writes:
"Christmas Between Colfax and Bloomer" explicitly mentions the inner realm as the source of the "gold" of freedom. Freedom here is also the freedom from the meaninglessness that so many people feel in their lives in our current Empire.

Thomas R. Smith is the author of several books of poems, most recently The Dark Indigo Current (Holy Cow! Press, 2000) and Winter Hours (Red Dragonfly Press, 2005). His self-published anti-war chapbook, Peace Vigil: Poems for an Election Year (And After) will be available for the duration of the Bush administration. He lives in River Falls, Wisconsin, and teaches at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.

Photo by Phil Pfuehler. Reprinted by
permission of the River Falls Journal.

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