Happy Holidays Creatives and Creativists!

I hope you’ll be enjoying a special and happy time over the sparkly season.

Below is a seasonal poem that my patrons won't mind, I think, if I share more widely, though it is not due for general release for another few weeks.

Thank you, as always, for reading. I wish you all good things for the holidays. I hope you're creating something wildly wonderful and unimaginable to the rest of us, in your work, or with friends or family.

Much love to you and yours, for the season and always.

I'll be back here on January 6th. Here's to your most creative year ever in 2020. And to a rip-roaring 2020s!

x

Orna

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CHRISTMAS RAIN: A POEM 

In the year’s dying days,

rainfall once again is falling,

failing to freeze and become snow. 

So… no white Christmas again this year,

just the falling, failing rain. As silent, 

I overheard you say, 

as a Christmas suicide.

What a chilling line. 



I know it hurts your soul, 

this ceaseless raining on the town

and on the fields of forest trees 

raised for the season, 

spruce and cedar, pine and fir, 

grown to be cut down. 

No sooner born than dying, 

you said, and reminded us again, 

lest we forget, about the ill, 

and indigent, and those afraid 

to be alone. 



Well yes, we must do what we can

but it also must be said,

those trees die in the cause of life: 

faith and hope and charity

friends and fun and family 

hymns and prayers and superfluity 

of food and drink and gifts. 



And now, whatever we might think,

it’s time to loop bright pearls of light 

and tinsel round the waiting bough, 

to decorate its needle-leaves, 

hang bauble globes of colour 

from its stalky branches, 

and top off the confection

with a sharply-pointed star. 



Then to step outside 

into the sodden air

and join the heaving crowds

to add our input 

to the manic ring 

of goods and money 

changing hands.



I am not blind to what that brings, 

but, oh my dear, is it not also true 

that in the spangled homes, 

the valiant trees are letting loose 

their scent of pine and fir?

And the weary world is waking

to the light returning

for another year? 



And look, 

can it be the rain is slowing, 

growing plump and white? 



Oh, let’s indulge the throb of hope. 

Let’s inhale, while we still can, 

the joy within the sparkly 

season’s glistening. 

Let’s taste the love

that is contained 

in the illuminating rain.