Pinball Christmas
The wind remembers the snow spirit
when the hunger moon paints clouds
flaxen with pearl. Christmas
is out
somewhere knocking
against lamp-poles like a steel ball
in a Jotun's bar
machine
looking to clang a bell
over a red kettle with slit lid
past which a clamor of people
pass quicker, suddenly stiff,
fever eyes cast down, wary of any
expectation to give
here in the Land of the Take.
Christmas is nowhere, I say,
in music or mind, only perhaps
in the rebound of blurred lights that fight
against the black buffer of December night,
striking their sparks where the heart is least bright.
~December 2019
Images: Salvation Army Bell Ringer, author unknown, manipulated, fair use
Christmas tree, 12/13/19, © joyannjones
