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
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