Poem for the holidays

This poem was inspired by Pink’s “What About Us” song. After all those months when hurricanes and fires were devastating peoples lives, I just felt I had to say something about those of us who won’t find this Holiday season a season of joy.

What About…?
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What about
Those of us
Who stand alone in the night?
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What about
Those of us
Who live in singular fright?
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What about
Those of us
Who cannot go out
Who have no small ones
Who joyously laugh and shout?
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Can we find
Comfort in that Holy Night
Can an event
2000 years passed
make it right?
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What about
Those of us
In poverty and pain?
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What about
Those of us
Who lost houses to hurricane rains?
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What about
Those of us
Where fire burned
Who in the ashes sit alone
Who this holiday have no home?
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What about us…
What about us…
Can the Savior save us from our pain?
Can there be a Christmas
When our tears fall like rain?
What about us?

The Season of Ghosts

The trees have dropped their mantels of orange and yellow.
Without their flaming reds, their bare up-stretched limbs
Are skeletal shadows petitioning some tree god above.
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My clothes closet, a treasure trove of holiday times passed,
Contains mom’s maroon wedding dress, altered for a party
Attended in happier days, not worn since.
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Pungent pine scents remind me of the fresh trees you brought me.
Your handwritten note pressed between the pages of an old journal,
Makes me cry, as I decorate without you on another Christmas Eve.
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Unpacking my ornaments is like riding a time machine to the past:
Mom comes alive in the “Shiny Brights”, my lover in the clear ones,
The history of my life all living on in those bits of blown glass.
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Memories of yesteryear come alive as the random play list scrolls
Its songs, jolting me away from today to vanished people and places.
Touching, as only music can, both the happy and the sad in my heart.
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It is the season of ghosts, a time when memories jump out
From the least expected places in my life.
And on Christmas day, these ghosts will join me at my dinner table
To celebrate what once was and can never be again

Fun With Words

The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational once again invited readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. I’m sure these will make you laugh! Here are the winners:
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