Christmas from Autumn to Spring
Do you remember that couple on the corner of Barton Road,
that bordered on Rowsley road, Sarah near my parents
who used to put up their Christmas Decorations
just before Halloween crept in every year
and eventually only took them down when March signaled
the Winter had finally sunk into the distance.
Melanie used to think it was a haunted house
and used to plead with me to go and knock on their house
every Halloween with her sister
to see what kind of ghosts or monsters
used to hide behind that front door
and would tut at me when I said we couldn’t do that.
The tree hung on-top of the door porch was the most impressive
do you remember telling me, Sarah the first time you saw it
when we were going to pick up both of the girls from my folks
and you described the 4 sets of lights
as looking like a huge bouquet of flowers
and giving the estate an extra pair of traffic lights.
Do you remember the Santa Claus hung on the front gate
which burst into Jingle bells if you stood too close to it
and the Angel lights on-top of their garage
that seemingly by magic seemed to go off at 5pm
and stop almost like they had been programmed
to go off when the owners went to work in the morning.
I know you liked the gnome which was hung on the side gate
which had a piece of Holly in his hands
almost like it was saying you were not going
to get in that house unless you kissed it
and you used to kiss me every time we walked past it
saying it was near enough not matter if it was dry or raining.
Neither of us could work out how large their electric bill
would have been every month it was all turned on
or forget the time when the bulbs blew on-top of the tree
and it shortened out the electricity for a good half a dozen houses
on either side of them for a good two or three hours
until the electric man eventually arrived to fix it.
Where it all came from I have no idea
to this very day, Sarah over twenty years later
tangling emotions into cobwebs instead of moths
bringing together moments before the music stopped
and why suddenly one year they just stopped
and the house just returned to normal.
Perhaps they just got bored
or simply couldn’t afford it any-more
or perhaps their patience grew thin
and their feelings towards Christmas
changed into bitterness and anger
broken into a voidic beat
or perhaps reality just spilled back to earth
and they were left floating upside down
like a sidewise bat
and everything they did left them
white with the exhaust of memory
when the snow came down once too many times.
©Andy N all rights reserved
Andy N is the author of three full-length poetry collections, the most recent being The Birth of Autumn. He also runs/co-runs Podcasts such as Spoken Label (Author Chat series), Reading in Bed (Book reviews with Amanda Steel), Comics Unity (comic magazine/film and tv-series with Michael) and A Nature’s walk (Philosophy and Nature walk chat with Colleen) Andy also does ambient music under the name of Ocean in a Bottle. His website is http://onewriterandhispc.blogspot.com/
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