In this months poetry showcase, we thought we’d get into the Christmas spirit! So without further ado- on with the festivities!
A time to share
Hear the music, the radio blares
Those classics of Whams last
Christmas, they share the magic of
Wizards, compare all my amaze and
Makes me wish it could be
Christmas, Christmas: every day.
All giving wishes, cards we send
Our words we say
As we intend to spend the time
With the ones who make us content
For we’re here now we’re
Hear: anyone who needs us and
Wants to listen to our festive cheer
As I walk through the door, entering
Home: soft
Sugars and spice and all things
Nice invade my nose the
Gingerly
Bread; all families
Live to breath so happily
All sounds of welcome, call out my
Name (they do)
Telling me they’re glad, so glad I
Came to my
Brandy snaps; their tyre tracks
Print the snow, a memory shown
Too big a tread for a reindeer’s toe
The cause for nostalgia;
The Christmas action:
The mincing of pies
The burn of the fire
All cosy inside, soft tingles the
Shudder, excitement down spines
Just to turn away to cry my
Carol; for carol singers there are as
They melodically light up our skies
As we wait for the jingles bells to
Blow our minds:
Watch our children run wild
As our old day nostalgia gleams in their eyes
Can’t drink the wine, too young they be, warm their cold
Paws
And longingly wait for their Santa Claus
Spoil me rotten
Can’t be forgotten for a magic like
Theirs for the one who cares
Is more than any present that they may
Share.
Olivia Morel
Festivity poem
They think that she won’t remember. Though the dates slip her mind
like knitting needles that won’t stay between her fingers anymore,
she knows enough
to purchase presents,
(which hid themselves somewhere
in the house before she could wrap them up)
She knew
by the sleet-grey clouds,
by the pronged steps from curious robins
etched onto frosty lawns,
come for the frozen feed.
Their red breast bobbing
like glacé cherries,
stirred in with the brandied fruit peel-she let the grandchildren lick the bowl.
Once there were white Christmases,
snow laid thick as icing atop cake.
Winter nights, sat running lengths of red felt beneath a sewing machine, the suit he wore to delight Boy Scouts and Christmas fayres every year.
Every so often on the local radio
they play Christmas songs of her youth
and rheumatic hips recall his firm hands, her butcher’s boy
Jack the lad who knew who to dance,
their footsteps, swaying back and forth,
in village halls, in this house, upon
on patterned carpet that’s lasted decades
embedded with shards of gold foil
torn off presents by crossed legged children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren.
Wet afternoons curling strips of old news into paper chains, placing the angel a top of the tree he lugged inside each year.
Now there’s no one to put up the tree. Hand stitched woolen decorations dampen in boxes in the loft.
Only the telly to talk to.
Lauren Winson
Amongst the Tinsel Lies My Hometown
Amongst the tinsel lies my hometown
Amongst the thistles
And the twisting woods
That I find parts of myself scattered down
On a long, hard walk
Where memory haunts.
Amongst the tinsel I am homebound
I was so frustrated, I thought
I just wanted out
But that pilgrimage home
Is a rite of passage
Dewy cobwebs shimmer
Like the glittering town lights
And the snow tumbles
As my willpower crumbles
And I’m sucked in by the sight.
Yes, amongst the tinsel
Lies my hometown
Amongst the blazing fire
That dances in the corner
And the tinkle of music
That from the backroom seeps out
Colouring my mindset
As we raise a toast together
In that moment
Completely spellbound.
Esther Kearney
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Featured image courtesy of Georgia Butcher
Article image 1 courtesy of Marit & Toomas Hinnosaar, image 2 courtesy of Mike Beales , and image 3 courtesy of Johan Neven via Flickr. No changes made to the images.
Image use licence here.
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