Christmas Poem

The small living room ceremony
of switching on tree lights
once again for the first time
to see if they still work.
The disappointment when
nothing happens. 
A daughter watches
a dad test, change and
tighten each fiddly bulb.
When they all light up
(and stay lit)
she sees magic.

A pudding made in the large stoneware 
with a slight chip on its rim from that time someone dropped it. 
A daughter trusted to grate nutmeg and hard white bread,
measure dried fruit, candied peel and cinnamon.
Time slowed, nearly stopped, by a path of black treacle 
slowly dropping from a spoon into the bowl.
The alcoholic whiff of brandy splashing 
into the heavy, heavenly mixture 
that tasted best before cooking.

A grubby brown sleigh bringing faded parcels,
a one-eyed santa, a wire pine tree blobbed with white paint
and a lonesome reindeer (once part of a herd)
stuck
into peaks of sugar snow.

Christmas day.
Presents 
that Santa has not found time wrap.
A board game, a tangerine
and the doll. Her missing white
sock and shoe never found.

Brussel sprouts 
flicked from the plates of children crying
‘yucky - frog’s fart.’
to the plates of children who scoffed
them like soft, wet marshmallows.
The year prawn cocktails became a ‘thing’.
The flaming pudding that did us in.

Trying to crack a Brazil
with the ornate, lose-hinged
brass nutcrackers.
Retrieving uncracked
Brazils from the carpet. Another
attempt. Success!
Your reward a puff of green mould.

Later
playing Pontoon for coppers.
A dad puffing on a fat cigar says,
‘lucky in cards, unlucky in cards.’
A puff-chested uncle puffing
on a fat cigar says,
‘lucky in cards, unlucky in love.’
Teasing brothers and cousins who say
‘unlucky in cards, unlucky in cards.’
An aproned mum off 
to put mince pies and sausage rolls
in the oven to warm.
The Ace you turned over first…