"The
Returning of Christmas in Southern California"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
12/13/07 6:32 a.m. pst
A million little white lights strung along countless eaves
Icicled pretenders twinkling in the dark
Inflatable Santas riding Harleys and wearing flip flops
Giant snow globes resting on brown green lawns
Christmas trees fashioned from plastic and steel
Heavenly angels looking skyward into cloudless blue
Here and
there an almost forgotten Nativity scene
Dusted off and displayed, even with the nicks
on the Baby Jesus' body
And Melchior, the slightly leaning Magi
almost toppling into the styrofoam pillars
Eighty dollar
douglas firs peeking from
plate glass windows in the McMansions,
draped with designer decorations
bought in mass from the local Costco
Under which piles of boxes from
WalMart and Target and Kohls
make ready to be opened on Christmas Day
Outside
in the cold clear night
the partially bundled homeless patrol the streets
collecting cans and bottles from the
mismatched trash cans on the curb
For them Christmas is just another day
And on that
day,
Thousands of Razor scooters and new bicycles
careen onto the freshly slurried macadam
on countless Southern California streets
and the smiles on the children seem genuine
If only for a moment.
Then the
sun falls into the horizon,
The broken toys and the dying Eighty dollar firs
are collected by the side of the road
with the mismatched trash cans on the curb
and the partially bundled homeless
continue their patrol unabated
as Christmas Carols fade into the darkness for another year
Poetry
2007
