Wednesday, January 12, 2011

triage




Christmas Trees
have taken over our
Pavements,
Creeping out under
cover of
Darkness,
Flood Warnings,
Dragged out out of 
bed to sober 
Up,
unwanted guests.


By morning they have
Succumbed to frostbite.
Shedding
needles like so many
Fingers. Toes.


Walking back
from the brink of
Shrivelling,
we step behind a
Dislocated limb,
allow a woman to
move past us,
Uninterrupted.


Thanks, she yawns,
Her breath a
Fog. Steaming like
Warm breakfasts.
Tea. Toast.


We nod and pretend
to examine the tree,
Stooping
like Undertakers on
The Job,
Measuring a corpse
left out in the rain.

7 comments:

Mr. Beer N. Hockey said...

We chip our dead Christmas trees around here. We're some green here b'y. Or, if you have a house and a small garden, you throw them out back and let the rain rot them back into the earth. Either way, Christmas trees are treated like dead rape victims.

ib said...

Yes. Or the inconvenient little tramp in Lou's "Street Hassle"; pretty to party with for a while, but prone to drop her needles in the shagpile carpet.

My own christmas tree is fibre optic. Nylon.

jonder said...

I enjoyed your poetry. We sank our Christmas trees in the lake where I used to live. The conifers slept with the fishes.

Anonymous said...

Nicely done. Evocative. I wish I could do that.

ib said...

The fish in that lake no doubt celebrate Christmas all year round. Swimming through a jungle of upended trees. Laughing at the turkeys filing along the shore; swapping high fives with the loaves.

Thank you, anonymous.

Tim said...

We gathered up all we could find and lined them up on Filbert street one night and set them on fire. We burned down the muni lines. What a great way to say so long Santa.

ib said...

Incendiary protest may be the way to go. Immolation. Has more of a biblical feel to it than the singing of carols; the holly and the ivy.