Mike Finch Jr. was glad he was leaving America. He had taken flights before, but not as long as this one and none as far. As the plane continued to circle and climb, he could see the blaze of lights of the city he was born and grew up in, grow smaller and smaller, a string of lights for the Yuletide season. He had picked one of the worst days of the winter to fly out. It had been snowing steadily all night long, and this morning he had to help his father, Mike Sr., shovel the snow from the driveway. However he was glad because where he was going it would be summer, and warm. If only man had the ability, and of course the sensible instincts of migratory birds, he would go north to south in the winter and vice versa.

Although his mother was worried (only abstractly Mike had thought) about this trip, Mike had delibrately picked Christmas Eve for the flight. "To get away from the whole cloying Yelutide Jingle Bells drama and to begin in the new year in a new country", he had told his elder sister when she had asked why couldn't he wait until after New Year's to leave, since he wasn't going to start work until February anyway.

In a quiet room, in the middle of summer, I have read the news you had sent.

You are embarking on a journey to the country Of marriage. There Time's wheel will turn again.

And there the old will become new again, And the codicils will open to a new page.

There write of music, and the darkness between the notes. There write of love, and the suffering that is its twin.

Let your lives, now hinged in seperate selves, Close and open as one, like shutters of a high window,

So that between you there is enough sun and rain, So that within you there is space for the other's refrain.

And that I, the stranger who is in you, on walking out some night Can see and rejoice in your love's overflowing delight.

For Kutti

Past one o'clock. You must have gone to bed. The Milky Way streams silver through the night. I'm in no hurry; with lightning telegrams I have no cause to wake or trouble you. And, as they say, the incident is closed. Love's boat has smashed against the daily grind. Now you and I are quits. Why bother then to balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts. Behold what quiet settles on the world. Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars. In hours like these, one rises to address The ages, history, and all creation.