The Old Man's Christmases

The old man goes on beyond his earned years

though heart misses beats and legs grow weak

and memory fades for recent events,

wondering why he’s still here

regretting harsh words of a long time ago,

and his selfish actions in having his say.

Yet he is still around at the top of each day

to count each blessing on his way,

with his friend for life of sixty-four years,

who brushed off her tears after all his misses

and backed up his play in spite of her fears,

since they met in the snow that long ago Christmas.

The old man remembers even longer ago

when the world, as now, was ill.

He was only six with no why’s or how’s,

in another new place with strange inside toilets,

with tonsils, scarlet fever and poverty,

depths of Depression and urban rebellion.

Even then the old man was grateful each day

for the grace and goodness of a lovely teacher,

the seasonal gathering of all the clan

and the sudden thump on the rented porch;

a huge turkey hamper in that strange urban isthmus

that gave the old man a new idea of Christmas.

In his last years the old man sees changing ways

of living for ME and fun and games,

of anthills of trillions of zeros and ones

all alone though in constant abbreviated contact

with Facebook friends and theTwitter tweet,

never knowing who they will “friend” or meet.

But then the old man thanks his artistic niece,

Linda the Activist, for using real English in reality style

Praising goodness and love in music she sends

created by boys and girls of Paraguay’s Landfill Harmonic Orchestra

and the Welsh Only Boys Aloud male chorus causing tears to amass

behind the old man’s admiring eyes this Christmas.

But last of all the old man sees a world of greed

of strife and hate, of wars and separation,

of incarnate evil, of madness and guns

and twenty grade ones and six young teachers

butchered in minutes by one spurt of madness

in the midst of seasonal joy at Newtown.

Yet the old man sees love and courage,

forgiveness and hope rise out of the grief,

a coming together of friends in their pain

and worldwide admission that we must change.

May all you abbreviated zeros and ones join a new class

to change the world to the old man’s true Christmas!

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