Almost Christmas

[Lukey and Jasmine in the snow. Look at Jasmine's eyes~she is thinking Lukey got
something to eat and she didn't. No fair! My foody girl, who has been on a diet forever.]

In childhood,
it felt like Christmas.
Crunching across
the frozen snow,
you could almost see
the Star of Bethlehem
in the black winter sky.
You could feel the cows
waiting in their stalls.
The manger seemed
very near.
The air was
so cold
it caught
in your nostrils
and froze there,
as you walked
to Church
in the dark
early mornings
before school.
You sang hymns.
You felt the magic
as the days
counted down
even though the reality
defied the expectation.

Now you are grown up,
past sixty,
an age
you never thought
you'd see,
and you put up
a small tree.
You enjoy the lights.
You buy the gifts
but it doesn't
feel the same.
There is no snow,
for one thing.
It is as mild as autumn out,
as if last week's
snowfall
was a fleeting dream,
and it seems like
a huge buying frenzy
by and for people
who already have
too much,
while you think
of people
dying in the Sudan
and how they would view
this spectacle,
these glittery store aisles
jammed with people
frantically clutching Things,
heaping their baskets
to obscene heights
with plastic junk.
How would they compute
this gigantic imbalance,
TV commercials extolling
dvd players and
laptops for children
while their own lap tops
beg only a bowl of rice
to make them full?

What stays the same:
the pleasure of giving,
not receiving.
The gathering of the clan,
the food, the laughter,
especially the laughter,
and the shy, pleased eyes
of the children,
new puppies to love.

This is your life now,
and so you live it,
peaceful evenings
in the glow of
the tree lights,
peaceful mornings
when the world
feels like
it is waiting
for something
dimly remembered
that has
so long
been lost.
Could it be
wonder?

There is a new generation,
now,
to make a Christmas for.
For them,
there is magic,
and anticipation.
So you don't tell them
that it is different, now,
for you.
You'd rather be
tending AIDS babies
in Africa,
or feeding street people
in a shelter
for the homeless.
And you decide:
Next year!
that's what you'll do.
All year long
you'll save
warm gloves
and socks
and hats and
woolly scarves.
Next year
you'll walk
the streets
to give your gifts.

Then maybe
Christmas
will feel
like Christmas
once again.

A long highway runs
between those
long ago
Christmases
and this one.
It all passed by
so fast,
yet it feels like
a hundred years;
each one
of those
Christmases,
unknowingly,
a journey,
not a destination.