Christmastime

a Christmas poem

One more for the morning, then you’re free to have a merry Christmas!

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Christmastime 

  Last week, I heard that Christmastime was here.
  That time of year when heads congest with song;
infants, dressed as wide-eyed elves, filmed beside the tree;
cousins, donned in Santa costumes, witnessed on TV;
aunts and uncles, gathering gifts, fly across the sea,
  where East meets Far, perhaps--I did not hear--
  to trace the steps of Orient Kings of a long, 
long time ago. Soon Christmastime will come and go again.

  I heard a manger is a lowly bed
  for a newborn’s head, no matter what the cold.
All the same, I got to thinking how December fares
in Bethlehem. Today, it’s fifty-five and clouds prepare
their rain. I wonder if it froze that night, if any hair,
  a couple strands, lay matted to his head.
  I wonder if that winter, it was told
how Christmastime would one day come, and what it could have been.

  Today, it seems that Christmastime has come.
  Each snowflake, just a crumb, falls from tinsel strings
in tireless malls, to rest in spirit on the tired mom
from aisle three. Carols interrupted o'er the intercom
form the hum of toddlers as they nom-nom-nom
  to thoughts of Christmas trees, while hearts grow numb
  to ringing bells and pleas. The world still sings
with tires, with sirens, for Christmastime we find we are mere men.