I always have a hard time at the end of the holiday season. The kids go back to school tomorrow, and this little bubble of togetherness and colored lights and warmth will evaporate. Time seems to stand still for those few weeks of December. And then, after the balloons drop and the clock strikes twelve on December 31st, the world turns back into a pumpkin.
I will leave my Christmas tree up for another month or so. Try to hold onto these feelings of good will for a little bit longer. Hark the herald. While shepherds watched. Away in a manger.
Silent night. Hallow's night.
Here's another poem from Saint Marty, about another of my favorite holidays.
All
Hallow's Snow
for the victims of Hurricane Sandy
October 30, 2012
All Hallow's Eve, the snow falls
Like volcanic ash on Pompeii,
Where parents curled around children,
Cocooned them against that instant
Of God unhinged, writing in magma
A poem of dinners uneaten,
Naps unfinished, men and women
Uncoupled, frozen in need,
Bodies joined forever under
The bright trumpet of disaster.
My son and daughter, in costume, greedy
For Milky Way and candy corn, don't pay
Attention to the snow this night,
Don't know we stand in a breath,
A punctuation of ocean and arctic.
Don't know that, last night, this wind drove
The Atlantic between mother and son and daughter,
Revised with wave and darkness, created
An elegy of salt and sea and ruin.
Here is what my children know:
They go to a door, hold out their bags
To strangers, receive sweetness.
I stand behind them
In the cold, listen for Vesuvius
To open its mouth,
To sing again.
for the victims of Hurricane Sandy
October 30, 2012
All Hallow's Eve, the snow falls
Like volcanic ash on Pompeii,
Where parents curled around children,
Cocooned them against that instant
Of God unhinged, writing in magma
A poem of dinners uneaten,
Naps unfinished, men and women
Uncoupled, frozen in need,
Bodies joined forever under
The bright trumpet of disaster.
My son and daughter, in costume, greedy
For Milky Way and candy corn, don't pay
Attention to the snow this night,
Don't know we stand in a breath,
A punctuation of ocean and arctic.
Don't know that, last night, this wind drove
The Atlantic between mother and son and daughter,
Revised with wave and darkness, created
An elegy of salt and sea and ruin.
Here is what my children know:
They go to a door, hold out their bags
To strangers, receive sweetness.
I stand behind them
In the cold, listen for Vesuvius
To open its mouth,
To sing again.
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| Nightmare before Christmas . . . |
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