Christmases Seen

Christmas, cliché,
unless you lift the floor boards,
see just-born mice,
wiggling, blind
close as my siblings and I once were

one in a grave
along with both parents
R.I.P.

stale carols, old decorations
to dig up, dig out, put up
string across the room,
about the house

Christmas was dinner
with guests at the table

gravy in boats
dishes of that, of this
passed about

children in the kitchen
wishing we were grown up
to join in

but we had our cowboy,
our Indian suits, our guns,
our rolls of fire crackers
to load them with
our back yard to run about in
to drop in when shot

people are dying as readily for real


© Obediah Michael Smith, 2006
4:55 p.m. 21/dec/06