Holiday Hosanna

image from our family album.

Holiday Hosanna 

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned

in life--it goes on.”--Robert Frost.

As a kid, I often wondered

                          why the holidays       seemed

                                                            so bitter

                                                            sweet

                           to my grandparents--

but now with grandchild #7 in the oven,

                           clarity regarding such confliction

                                     descends like acid rain that peels

                            epidermal layers, revealing truths that come

                     with candy cane daggers & cranberry barbs,

                     with tattered bibles & sugary shrouds,

                     with faded photographs & garlic breath,

                     with dripping tinsel & torn wrapping paper,

                     wearing popcorn necklaces & gumball gems.

It has everything to do with the moaning string

                            of loved ones,

                            of tolerated ones

                            of forgotten & disliked ones; yes,

                                               ALL passed on, BUT

                        their faces, spirits, smiles, grimaces, hearts

                   & idiosyncrasies emerge around

          our family table, as those of us

still breathing gather in celebration & kinship.

As grandparents we sit now

at the head of the table,              venerated, respected & loved,

          happily assuming the inherited roles

of patriarch & matriarch               wearing a laurel of lilies,

                                                     holding a dove’s feather in one hand

                                       & a fancy silver fork in the other.

Those lost to us find their way home during the festivities--my still young

mother, dead at 39 in ’68, my three boorish stepfathers, a cruel trinity,

--perhaps even my biological father, whom I never met or knew, my lovely

grandparents, on my mother’s side, my wife’s parents, & too many friends,

acquaintances, bad bosses, drunken cronies, dearest comrades, cousins,

uncles, aunts, nieces & nephews--a swarm of specters on queue, increasing

in numbers on line with each year.

My dear mother-in-law was last to pass, at 90, last July. We always

flew to Texas each year to celebrate Christmas with her, more than

two decades of sweet tradition. Her empty chair, empty plate & absent

cheer will be sorely missed. My wife is already weeping when she 

thinks I don’t notice, the heartaches from Lucille’s passing still being

fresh wounds all around.

Hurrah, holidays

are upon us, as the dead

sit there behind us. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Pub Poetics