Christmas Card Friends

Do my words hang in corners
by snow-covered trees
and the unremarked faces of angels?
Do you look for my messages,
old secrets gift-wrapped in rhyme?

I choose pictures with meanings
and couplets that recast the spell.
I send you magic:
you send me ‘Joyeux Noel’.

I share the same greeting
with old friends from school
whom you pass in the street without knowing
yet my lips touch the rubber-stamped
crosses that never touched yours.

Long ago, we were lovers;
for me, even old love transcends
the dead sheets of paper
that pass between Christmas card friends.