Yuletide

Dazzling Christmas magic,

Woven fabrics all the way,

An amber red:

A burning fire

Tasting toasted

Just like the alcohol

Dripping from the decanter.

An appetiser or two,

Such as the soft-centred caramels;

Romance deeper than those delicacies

Shines out;

Christmas colours sing

Their own hymns

In briar verse

With Holly Red on chorus,

Nightly chorus,

And crinkled foil to dance

About the dozen eighths;

An endless song of glory,

It is only fooled

By trepidation;

There, a passiontide for the eyes,

Whilst the soul basks

Ever deeper

Into the rhythms of the

Stronger-than-Yuletide cheer,

The shot-between of all actions,

The follow-through,

Best reward there is to give-

It’s theirs to give-

In this time when loneliness will reign.

Paradise,

A single glance,

Slender palms clasping the rhythm

Of Christmas psalmage,

Narrowed eyes watching it

Through the succession of the mind;

Angels in a surround,

More music than a thousand hearts,

And harps,

Can ring out,

No saviour in the first instant,

In the pretend,

Yet more than one love can

Withhold:

The warming drink none of man can resist:

The taste of truth

Of the love itself,

More nourishing,

An everything,

Decadence wrapped up in zeal,

And decorated by the patterns of what

May be,

The hope of what must be gifted

Between man exactly;

It is the tinsel between fingers,

Dazzling to the observant,

Bland to the camera’s shy,

Soft touch,

That is rough to the uncaring,

The makers of stone faces

Halled in petrified amusement;

A stone manger shown

Through none other than the obvious

Of flesh and blood.

The emancipated by being,

The shut in by more greed,

All share the same tender kisses of time,

Aspirations, not jarring notes,

Yet high to dance amongst the single star,

A glory-sign to advance the waery ones.

All that grows, once mundane,

When the mistletoe

Dangles seductively,

Knowing the Christmases to come,

And New Year’s march to go,

The holiday’s true colours,

Vivid in a mantel-row,

Much more covered

Than the path with snow,

Dotted fragments of the future,

Light underfoot, heavy with meaning;

They are unlocked with just a twist,

When the heart has more to show,

A tender cry of babe’s rebirth

Inside a place once haunted

By too early hours,

The lantern light,

In dark of night,

Has more to lead and more to sew,

More to open up and here to show.