Super-sized Series

Merry Christmas

   

 

 Sugared and Spiced by Kelly Barnes Sargent

Once upon a time, in a wintery, cedar-shingled home seventeen miles      north,
I watched you bake gingerbread buddies with Grammy
to take home in the Currier & Ives tin specially reserved for that time of      year.

Brushing your glistening oval face with the back of your tiny hand,
flour powdered your cheek lightly.
As pale as it colored you, I could still see your skin
flushed peppermint pink with excitement
to first glimpse your round-faced buddy
as he emerged from the cherry-wood cabinet to greet you yet another      year.

Grammy, wearing her festive holly and ivy cardigan,
chuckled as you spun him around three times
to find just the proper placement in the dough for his face
that smiled good cheer at you.
When your still-sticky-with-dough fingers
separated the sugar-laden mitten from his arm,
Grammy assured you with an easy wave
that he wouldn’t be in need of it in the oven —
it was toasty enough inside.

Grammy passed you the cranberry-red spatula —
the one with the nick in the handle, used only for baking.
You held it delicately in your fingers
as though you were holding a snowflake between their tips.
Lovingly, you lifted “Mr. G” above your head and slid him —
his belly portly from butter —
onto the crisp white parchment awaiting his arrival.
Eyes level with his feet, you lingered at his toes while standing on your      own.

Later that evening, you kissed Grammy goodbye
with lips rosy from red sprinkles.
Clutching the tin, lidded with snow-dusted Morgan horses,
you waved from your own fanciful “sled” in the driveway.
Once home, you climbed out without delay,
your treasured, golden goodies still pressed tightly against your chest.
I spied a few stray crumbs in the backseat,
and smiled at your silent stealth.

You waited on the doorstep, hushed by falling snow.
Currier & Ives, if able, would have lithographed you in the doorframe
with ornate snowflakes adorning your auburn mane,
eager to get inside to telephone your best friend
and assure her that you had arrived safely at home
with your new buddies,
sugared and spiced
with everything that was nice.

Appeared in Silver Birch Press Spice and Seasoning Series  

 

 

 

Father Christmas by Lynn White

 

I was so excited.

It was nearly Christmas

and I was going to meet

Father Christmas himself.

 

I was so excited, 

wearing my best coat and bonnet,

hopping from one foot to the other

in the long queue of children

waiting with their mums

to be allowed into Santa’s Grotto.

 

I was so excited.

We were nearly there.

I could see the grotto

with it’s tinsel and fairy lights

twinkling.

I was going to sit on his knee 

and have my picture taken,

and that was in an age when

photographs were even rarer

than Christmases..

 

I was so excited.

There were the elves...

But wait..

they were cardboard.

Where were the real elves,

the magic ones,

why weren’t they there?

“They’re much too busy”,

my mum said.

“But Father Christmas will be real”.

 

We paid our money

and there he was.

He really was.

I couldn’t wait to climb on his knee

and examine his beard.

I’d never seen a beard before.

But he was very tetchy when I pulled at it

and told me to stop.

Then it went lop sided

and I realised 

it was a false beard

and I told him so, angrily.

He put it back.

“Stop thy wriggling”, he said.

“You’re not the real one,

I don’t want to sit on your knee” 

 

Flash went the camera.

 

And outside there was a queue of children

waiting 

to be addressed.

Hands on hips.

“He’s not the real one.

He’s got a false beard.

He’s not magic at all,

they’re cheating you!”

It’s a swiz!

Then the store manager came.

 

I was so excited.

 

First published by Silver Birch Press

 

 

 

BELLS by Barbara Crooker

Here, the bells are silent, blown glass hung from
branches of pine whose fragrance fills the room.
It's December, and the world's run out of color.  
Darkness at five seems absolute outside
the nine-squared panes of glass.  But inside
hundreds of small white lights reflect off
fragile ornaments handed down from before
the war. They're all Shiny-Brite, some solid balls—
hot pink, lime green, turquoise, gold—some striped
and flocked.  This night is hard obsidian, but these glints
pierce the gloom, just like their glittery echoes, the stars.  
We inhale spruce, its resinous breath: the hope of spring,
the memory of summer. Every day, another peal
on the carillon of light.

first published in the MacGuffin

 

 

 

Hope Tiptoeing in Christmas Lights by Kavita Ezekiel Mendonca

The melting snow has made furrows
in the road that passes our home
It is a winding long railroad track
with bright-eyed houses on either side,
Christmas lights wink and blink
Arranged in rings
on the pine trees outside the window
Flashing like signals at a railroad crossing.

There is no train on this road
It just looks like a railway track,
I am inside with my Christmas train of thoughts.

The lighted rings, we hope
Will cheer the passerby
The strobe lights on the lawn
that dance on the snow
Will applaud the night
and keep company with the stars.

In the blink of an eye
The train will move on to another station
A new year will arrive swiftly, perhaps silently
Or with a big bang.
More lights, more thoughts
More phases of the moon and stars
The occasional rays of sunshine
To allow some permanence
In the human heart.
                        
First published in Verse-Virtual   

 

 

 

Hymn to the Holidays by Jayne Jaudon Ferrer

‘Tis the holiday season,
upon us at last--
three months of ebullience
and hearty repasts.
First, black and orange bedlam,
Halloween hue and cry,
then turkeys and pilgrims
and Mom’s pumpkin pie.
December descends in
the arms of Jack Frost,
a month of abundance,
no matter the cost.
Presents and pageants
and parties galore,
carols and cards…
everywhere, such décor!
In the year’s final season,
our blessings abound:
time with family and friends
as we gather around…
precious memories rekindled
as new ones are made…
and hope springs as plans for
the future are laid.
The holiday season’s exhausting,
for sure, but for all of the work
and expense you endure,
you’re rewarded with thoughts
that will last ‘til year end--
and that makes it worthwhile
when it rolls ‘round again
 

 

 

A Gift of Beaches in a Bag by Joe Cotonwood

At the bodega there’s a sign:
    FOUND!!
    In a Safeway bag!
    “Memo Park” needs help
    delivering a gift to Grandpa!
It’s nine weeks since Christmas.
Recently I left some bags at the bodega
for recycling. I don’t remember
a gift from my grandson’s family
so I tell Christine the cashier:
“Hey. I think I might be that grandpa.”

A thin flat package wrapped with cartoons
on which a child scrawled
    TO GRANDPA
    from memo park.
My grandson, age four, lives in Menlo Park.

So I open.
Inside, a State Parks placard
good for an entire year of free entry
for walks on the beach!
Maybe I shout. Surely I grin.
Thank you thank you so much
whoever opened the old sack,
whoever found and passed to me
this year of beaches in a bag
from my thoughtful family.

Christine forgets to take
my money until I remind her.
She hands me a penny in change, winks, says
“Believe in miracles. Have a nice walk.”
“I’ll have a hundred!”
And I do.

First published in Red River Review  

 

 

 

Two poems by Mary McCarthy

Christmas Canticle

It takes me a long time
to dress my tree
opening each box of ornaments
like opening a gate to years
of accumulated memory
the echo of light on glass
painted baubles, rough tinsel
we so carefully untangled
to hang straight, like the icicles
lining the roof edge
in the dark of these short days
glinting in the reflection
of streetlights, neon, and even
the chilly moon–careful
because I know
how fragile bright things are
how hard to hold on to, slippery
ss soap in the shower, as a wet
floor ready to send you
smashing down, afraid you
will shatter like something
thin walled and made of glass
this ceremony important
making some brief act
of grace, despite the drudge
of ordinary days
a dream remembered
counterpoint to the rising
storm of rage building
in my father’s arms
inescapable, impossible
nothing you could offer
big enough or good enough
to keep the peace
all that anticipation quashed
impotent unredeemed
and yet, like a dance
whose steps I can’t forget
promise I can’t give up on
repeated again and again
the best and worst of it
together, true, the only way
I know to celebrate


One Christmas

He broke our hearts
bringing home an aluminum tree
with its own light bulb
and cellophane color wheel
that turned and lit
those tinfoil branches
blue and red and green
so proud, he said
you didn’t need
ornaments

We couldn’t smile
We wanted a real tree
that would smell like pine
and drop real needles
on the artificial snow
even our old
skinny wire and papery green
fake tree would have been better
there was so much space
between those flimsy branches
to hang the glittering
almost weightless
glass-fragile balls
room to twist the lights
and carefully place the icicles

Set between the mirror
and the window
it sang and echoed light
real and reflected
so much more beautiful
than it ever should have been

“One Christmas” appeared in Verse Virtual, “Christmas Canticle” appeared in The Journal of Radical Wonder.

 

 

 

 

 

Riding the Mail Truck on Christmas Eve in Montana by Sharon Waller Knutson

The mailman’s moustache is white
as the snow that covers the hillsides
and rooftops of farmhouses and barns
as my sister and I bundled up in scarves,
stocking caps, mittens and wool coats
in below zero temperatures sit on mailsacks,
presents in our laps, and the mail truck
treks through a blizzard on back roads
from Billings to Broadus for 167 miles

It is the sixties and we are in our twenties
and my father will do anything to have
his daughters home for Christmas
even if it means enlisting the help
of the Postmaster. We run into a wall
of snow blocking the road at midnight
when like a shining star we see headlights

and a snowplow chipping at the wall
and we follow the taillights as it carves
a path for three miles and lead us
to the door of a two-story farmhouse
where my father and mother stand
in their bathrobes. anxiously awaiting.
the arrival of their only children.

My father waves to the mailman
and the snowplow driver, the father
of a student in the one-room schoolhouse
where he teaches Grades 1 to 12.
The mail truck picks us up Christmas
night and we ride back to Billings
following the snowplow as snow
continues to fall and pile up.

Neither rain nor sleet nor snow
can stop the mailman or the Waller
sisters from their appointed duties.

From My Grandfather is a Cowboy  

 

 

 

Christmas Tree Recycled in the Dunes by Joanne Durham
    With thanks to the Cape Fear Surfrider Foundation    
    
Stripped of angels
that haloed its crown, the tree
lies bare and awkward, shaved trunk
shoved into sparse remains of a dune lost
to last year’s storms. Tourists laugh at its odd,
prone position, but soon its parched arms catch
swirls of sand and settle them gently on the rising
slope. The tree blends with beach elder and sea
oats, mingles with dwarf fountain grass
to become the dune’s spine, its fragile
hold on integrity. Grown from the
deep emerald energy of the forest
the tree shines as the graced
do, even now reimagined.

From to Drink from a Wider Bowl

Taking Down the Tree

By Laurie Byro

For Shawn, who insisted

We take down the tree, the day after New Year, the day after
the movie, the new version with Meryl Streep as Aunt March.

Already we are missing the plastic and cardboard boxes
for the “Little Women” doll-ornaments, a gift from my mother.

She and I loved this story, and she herself was the best of mothers,
the worst of mothers, she tried awfully hard. We were all envious

of a family of cousins, four girls, who lived down the road.
We were champion skaters, and spent winters skating under the stars,

but unlike the story, their lake was more mosquito-swamp than snow globe.
Regardless, hand-holding hand, we formed whips. We ruined many a kitchen

floor with our unguarded-skates. One of us, could even skate backwards,
spin, like Dorothy Hamill. As I said, we were champions.

Each of these four girls played their part, but it may have been different.
The eldest, was not the athlete like Jo, too self-conscious of her weight,

yet she was the rebel, and she never quite fit in, she observed.
Jean-Marie, the dutiful favorite, like Meg, married for love.

She lived up to everyone’s expectations; they even called her Sissy.
Ruth as Amy, married well, traveled the world, the family envied Ruth.

Judy was more puzzling as Beth. In some ways, she was the sweet one,
and she survived Lupus. In that is the death of her childhood, her old

self. I loved them all. I was Laurie. I was the interloper. I peered into
their kitchen, but was separated by a window, never quite inside.

As we take down the tree, after the movie, I tell my husband what I know
of Alcott: her horrible father, her abject poverty. Shawn dreads

this season of hope and yet he is the first to send me an angel, sometimes
red and green, often not. I apologize as I wrap up the ornaments saying

“Shawn it all sucks.” As I wrap each ornament, there are some that will
break, some lose their glitter, and these I discard. The garbage man, recently

tipped, will shudder under the weight of these sacks of plastic, a hung-
over Santa, but not complain as this is his job. The ones that survive

another year, I carefully wrap and put away. Where are those danged
“Little Women” boxes, I wonder? I hope next year the tree will be better, the shape

perfect, the air fragrant with shadow-mice memories of us on that pond.
I hope I will see this clearly. Maybe Shawn is the smart one? As for the dolls,

I will find them tucked in their cotton batting, I save for this purpose. Somehow,
I am comforted, as they sleep in their new boxes; they will stay the same.

From New and Selected Poetry of Laurie Byro