A Child's Christmas Carol

Once, it was a time of true magic, when the world was small and soft. It had to be magic, my mind of five told me: how else could my brothers and I go to sleep on an ordinary, dull and quiet night... to awaken in sheer joy the next morn as though we had been zapped by a warm bolt of harmless lightning-- setting our now restless bodies tingling. Like racehorses at the gate of magic, we stood at the top of the stairs, pulling at whatever patience we could muster under the admonitions of Mom and Dad to wait!-- wait! the camera must be loaded-- but how very painful it was to be still when we knew that children's paradise was a stairway away-- and what a paradise we saw unfolded in our now unfamiliar living room! The tree drew our eyes first--it was big and fat, with its branches sagging under the great weight of all its myriad ornaments: glass balls and sweets and plastic candy canes and tinsel drooping as though it hung on a some forsaken weeping willow instead of a tall, proud Blue Spruce : and millions and millions and millions of colored lights, blinking relentlessly, made our tree sparkle like the royal crown of a giant king-- perhaps the King of Toys, for toys were seen everywhere we looked: cars ,trucks , bikes, games, bats-- and balls! Each brother ran quickly to his own precious pile (we marveled how thoughtful Santa must be) and knew in each pile would be some boxes beautifully wrapped but sans treasure, holding only socks or shirts, perhaps a sweater-- well, even the jolly fat man could not be perfect-- still, he brought magic to our dull house every year, transforming our prosaic lives into poetry overnight by wonder, by magic, by love.... And when he went away, when I was an ancient six, the world grew much bigger but colder, dull and empty of that special joy that can only come to those children who believe.... [Note: This bittersweet poem was also bittersweet to write, as losing childhood itself is bittersweet.] rec'd n/a in Regina McIntosh's contest, 12/18/20