Here are two poems written about and around Christmas. The first speaks to our hopes; the second to the inevitable flatness as the holiday ends and we once more face up to reality.

But all is not lost. Hope comes from within, and as Luke Andreski writes in Critical Mass Magazine, Hope is a moral imperative. Hope is a revolutionary act and it comes from within. Hope does not depend upon external events. And hope emerges in the second poem as an act of defiance and of self discovery.

Well that’s what I think. It was not what I was thinking when I wrote these poems. It is what I think when I read them. Poetry is like that. The act of writing, like the act of Hope, changes things. It changes me. I hope it changes you. This is why I write.

A CHRISTMAS WISH

Let kindness be not lost
Among discarded wrappings
Underneath the tree.

Let us discount the cost
Of the season’s trappings
As we set its spirit free.

Let the sparkle of the frost
And the meltwater lapping
Herald Spring’s new life and liberty.

BOXING DAY

On Boxing Day I pack my
Disappointments, wrap them up
Until it’s time again for expectations.

The new year beckons, filled with
Hopes, not waiting on the time
When I unfold my parcelled dreams.

Resolute, I open up the page,
Lift my pen, taste the ink,
And I commence to write,

         “On Boxing Day …” 

I am looking forward to my new year poem now. I do not yet know what it will be. But I do know that I have to write it.