Holiday Tale in Black and White

image borrowed from bing

Holiday Tale in Black & White

“Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer,

but always it will be a day of remembrance--a day

in which we recall everything we have ever loved.”

---Augusta E. Rundell

Christmas Eve came, 

and my youngest daughters arrived

to cook for me, celebrate, play cards, and to phone

their mother who was visiting our oldest daughter

in Baltimore, playing with our two infant grandsons.

My sweet girls stayed until I was exhausted,

hoping to make me forget for a moment

that I was home alone.

Christmas dawned cold, wet, and gray;

just perfect, no in climate weather

to impede my journey to join some friends

for a scrumptious holiday breakfast;

mounds of butter-fried French toast,

flipped about fragrantly in big black pans,

plates smothered with spicy sausage,

lean bacon and fresh fat eggs.

We ate by candlelight, chatting & laughing,

surrounded by ribbons and colorful Christmas

bulbs, silver streamers & gold confetti,

our thoughts twinkling as we discussed the spirit

of the day, and I was the first to notice that something

was changing outside the windows, my God--

it was snowing, fat pointy flakes of spiked white,

first a few squads, then battalions, before

whole armies blanked out the sky;

snow, holy Jesus, snow; a world drenched white,

a rare occurrence on Christmas Day

in Puget Sound; panicking me

as I drove home off of their hillsides, hoping

the roads would remain clear; but soon,

too soon, the snow became rain,

and those overweight snain-drops slapped

my windshield and the pavement like you

would slap a bad dog with a newspaper.

Later, while at home watching

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE for the hundredth

time, other friends called with a gracious

invitation for me to join their family gathering

for Christmas dinner, but I politely declined

the offer, not wanting to be cast as the pitiful

old fool brought in to be fed & fussed over,

dropped down hard amongst a swarm of strangers.

Of course later I did feel hunger’s prick, 

and nothing in the larder seemed significant

enough to fit the image of festive fare, so

out I went with my car, roaming the wetness,

passing all those other homes lit brightly,

filled with family, and all those restaurants

that were darkened premises, festooned 

with handmade signs all announcing

“Closed for Christmas”.

Driving in aimless circles, my lonesome crusade

garnered gold surrounding the bold neon letters

that spelled Denny’s; pulling in happily I marveled

at how full the parking lot was.

They wished me holiday greetings as they seated

me in a large booth alone, & presented me with

a special menu with only ten holiday choices.

I heard myself order #7; meat loaf, home fries,

and apple sauce, and while sipping my strong coffee

I looked about the place, and suddenly, without warning

I was overwhelmed with sadness, I mean what kind

of loser had to come to Denny’s for Christmas dinner?

But as my eyes roamed the room I saw complete families,

truck drivers, pods of seniors, some street people, 

and three older ladies laughing heartedly; some

in work clothes, some in church clothes, focused

on each other, with no one staring back at me;

an invisible man munching meat loaf.

Driving home with my window down, enjoying

the cold air, I recalled that morning’s headlines

in the Tacoma News Tribune:

23 dead from a car bomb in Baghdad,

15 dead from a suicide bomber in Afghanistan,

the armed forces of the United States had received

30,000 turkeys and a flat ton of cranberry sauce,

and the city of Tacoma had counted 800 homeless

souls jamming up the missions & flophouses last night. 

Damn, just another day in the life, no better,

no worse than hundreds of others that had occurred 

in 2007, so I decided that what we needed to do

was take a serious shot at World Peace, treat

our planet better, watch our waistlines, and maybe

elect a woman or a black man as President,

so that Christmas 2008 could really shine. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

Celebrating the dVerse Poets 2nd anniversary we will use past MTB prompts

to write from; I chose December 2011, Victoria C. Slotto asking us to write about Emotion. 

Would you like to hear the author read this poem to you?