Cupboards filling up
with stuff we can’t touch
like industrial sacks of dry roasted peanuts
and biscuits for cheese, specifically.
Seems this season of excess
begins with an interminable exercise in restraint,
where even one mince pie is missed.

Dragged grumbling to go visiting
Pat and Sue’s house
(mum and dad have friends?!)
whose kids are the “same sort of age”
as if that helps.
Then finding not only do they have
a massive, four lane Scalextric,
their tree has actual chocolate on it!
Or, it did have.

A slight huff descends at today’s candy cane pic.
Those abstract blues,
lost along with childhood,
of time moving way too slowly.
Still a whole week of school to go,
stretching vast like an ice shelf,
with only a hint of impossibly brilliant things
in the far, far distance

Like silk threads, I watched my life today
stretch taught but hold,
colleagues and friends weighted,
reaffirming their bedrock
as again plates shifted

Our watered shoots
stood bewildered but steady,
as future wounds reached them
despite our insistent gauze

Looking through windows,
we grown, choked
as other faces told our pasts again

And we fought not to feel
though we knew that we had to

Because every day’s a school day

Today, the opened door  
loosed sharp memory,
someone missing from the rituals,
the glitter bright edges of the season
showed that they can catch,
draw tears,
with only long years
returning the absent love

The picture for ten mirrors my debut role:
Innkeeper.
Granted, a step up from shepherd
or heaven forbid, a cloud,
but in hindsight, lustily singing
about being an opportunistic
slum landlord
seems an artistic risk

For a time the doors are flicked open
and forgot
in a rush to dress, cram breakfast
and sing ad infinitum
(to the great delight of my brother, I’m sure)
the final rehearsals for the Christmas play
make days thrum by