New Year’s Eve with Marie Antoinette

The sparkling Christmas lights still hang 
around the window’s bitter portrait 
of the early darkness and the rain.

Marie and I are tucked into the sectional’s 
deep corner, celebratory flutes of champagne
in our hands and firelight reflecting
in her eyes. She’ll never be as old as I am now
or see one of her children 
reach the age of mine. Due to the rain, 
this old year’s fireworks have been called off,  
and so we won’t be out in town 
among the glittered noisy throngs, 
but nestled in that private family life 
Marie knew only as a Temple prisoner. For her, 
It was the one time we led a life like yours, 
our children near to us, 
and respite from the court panopticon.

And though she knew by then that she would die, 
she still imagined that her son might live
to rule in France, her loved first daughter 
make some safe marriage in a far regime.

I think that this year you ought to resolve
to keep your head, she teases me.
I truly can’t endorse the alternate.

Outside the Temple walls, thundering
chants for blood and revolution—
within, she read with dear Marie Therese, 
or took Louis to walk the prison’s garden paths.

Tonight we share some bites of lemon cake 
and watch my daughters gamble penny candies
at the dining table. The new year rolls out 
like a bolt of silver silk. Just this evening, 
I know the world’s worth saving,
and I can listen to the rain unworried 
by December’s lack of snow,
our home a glowing candle in the night.