Bad form. It's funny isn't it, Max. You both so seem to agree with the ludicrousness of all the festivity and yet some vestige of hankering for surprise and/or ritual play lingers.
Hadn't thought about that chimney lack being such a 'fretful' thing. But I suppose it could be, like another diminished thing: backyards, no longer available to go out and play in, new houses being banged up hard against fences, no room for a clothesline much less a makeshift cricket pitch.
Ho ho,
Bill
> On 31 Dec 2014, at 4:39 pm, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Christmas Trees
>
> Days to go before Twelfth Night
> and I’m stumbling on the pavement
> stubbing my toes on pine trees -
>
> last week in those apartments
> they were propped up, lit up,
> crowned with angel or star.
>
> At the base piled up gifts
> wrapped in red and green, tied
> with gaudy ribbons. Kids
>
> wrote notes to Santa, helped
> mother in the kitchen, fretted
> that they lacked a chimney.
>
> Red stockings fastened
> to high window ledges.
> The shopping! in the elevator
>
> dog and I, nostrils twitching,
> leaned towards bulging
> bags of food, leaned back
>
> as pine-tree pongs assailed us,
> and prickly pine-arms pushed
> us to the elevator corner.
>
> I spoke to a human behind one,
> smaller than the tree he’d bought.
> Wonderful custom, he grumbled.
>
> Outside town, acres had been
> clear-felled of these, next year’s
> crops were in the offing.
>
> Have a good one, everyone
> was saying to everyone.
> These days, happy for others,
>
> I don’t do Christmas.
> Music, yes, croaking first
> verses of old carol favorites,
>
> leaving the choirs to finish.
> I wrapped some books, recently
> smuggled in (unwarranted expense),
>
> propped them by our bed
> at midnight, saying Let’s open
> our parcels now, then sleep.
>
> Bad form. Christmas breakfast,
> two of us and the dogs,
> a certain ruefulness.
>
> At least we didn’t have a tree.
> Now I’m walking a dog,
> our nostrils twitching -
>
> superfluous evergreens
> endanger our outing -
> wishing the world preferred
>
> the artificial everlasting
> totally kitschy trees that get
> squeezed back in their box
>
> like resolutions briefly
> on show for the time of year,
> seeing out the old, seeing in the new.
>
> 29 December 2014 / Seattle / Max R
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