The cold days at the turn of the year

A poem about celebration and mortality. And saying thank you.

Photo by Chelsey Nicoll on Unsplash

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The winter holidays, Christmas included, share a theme of light in darkness. Shortly after Christmas, though, we’re summoned into another, unofficial season reminding us that even our favorite light-bearers can’t stay with us forever. Maybe our thanks to them for the time they spent holding the light is one way to keep it shining.

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AFTER CHRISTMAS


In the cold days at the turn of the year,
when twinkle-lights go dark in every window, when images
of Santa and stars and stockings are eclipsed by earnest lists
and ads for elliptical trainers, I see my neighbor,
as she walks down the street, stop next to each parched Christmas tree,
stripped of ornaments, felled to the grey winter curb. Each time
she reaches out to touch a branch, the stiffened needles 
clutching maybe a forlorn scrap of tinsel; she speaks 
a brief soft word, walks on. Once I was near enough, when she paused
by the corpse of a six-foot fir, to hear her speak: “Thank you,” she said,
“thank you.” Then, looking up to see the question on my face,
she gave a small shy shrug. “I feel like they deserve a word from someone
after all they gave. I tried saying ‘I’m sorry,’ but then I remembered
how much I love to see them shine in windows up and down the block.
When new trees go up next December I won’t be sorry,
I’ll be glad. Still, they pay the price for my gladness. ‘Thank you’
seems the least that I can say.”
                                                      “And do they ever answer?”
I heard myself ask, as if that were a reasonable question, which 
my neighbor seemed to think it was; she tipped her head, considered.
“Every so often, when I stop and speak to one, I get a noseful
of good green smell, just as I walk away. Other times, though,
the bigger branches trip me up or scratch my leg. One drew
a little blood. I wasn’t angry. I would feel the same.”

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