written at midnight Christmas Eve…

Beneath the Christmas Branch

Beneath the Christmas branch
I linger on the eve of magic promised long ago
Still waiting for wonder to stun me into
waking from the dream of lack and fear,
I put in time until Santa is proved
or until I die, whichever arrives first

Will a burst of colour explode the sky
into faces and flowers, reflections of
Powers long thought lost, faeries flitting
between motes of light so bright
I dazzle eyed shrink back into my little self
on the shelf of a worldly world

Of material goods, the daily grinding me
down into the size I am, a safely
Matched set with all my others, mirrored people
fitting into the churchly steeples
One like another, like the next and the next,
I never fit that mold but grew cold trying.

Lying to myself, like parents lie
to children on this eve, wait, Santa will
Come if you are good, implying that
deviations from standards of behavior
will be punished by withholding magic,
a tragedy only if you believe

Me, I conceived a plan to stand on firm ground
of consensus reality, from the moment
I woke to see my mother’s guilty hand
stuffing the stocking at my bedstead instead
Of he who had been promised, oh the lies

stuffed my head like a winter cold
congealed into rules, laws, expectations of
lack of magic, the manifest realms made
Mundane by scientific formulae containing
no possibility of deviance or creativity

So when magic comes, it takes me by surprise,
and return it does, over and over, yet
Somehow seldom on this eve of eves,
such promised time laden with expectation

of specialness and sweets while replete we be
with savoury stuffings and fruit, yet
ever magic lingers elusive at the edge
until the moment we least expect it.

Xmas 2009

This entry was posted on Friday, December 25th, 2009 at 8:04 pm and is filed under Writer's group exercises, poems and lyrics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.