Evergreen

They’ve hauled me into the parlour, secure in terracotta packed with soil, to sit awhile before my ritual humiliation. Soon I will be baubled, showy, gaudy, tinselled – the court jester who will keep them smiling through their feast – and burdened with things that dangle, like a tart’s cheap earrings, and those little wooden reindeer, hand-painted, made in Korea. But for now they seem to contemplate my noble nakedness, their eyes detained by something unplumbed in their reality; and they are silenced, for just an instant, by a notion, perhaps, of distant green, a timeless forest that impinges on the periphery of their awareness, seeing me as I would remain, could they but permit such an insult to their tradition.