Truer gifts

Truer gifts

by Lisa Leafstrand

from A Widening Light, Regent College Publishing, 1984

The whole world (it seems)

is soaring into Christmas

meeting the cold with such proper spirit

hanging up pines with bulbs and best wishes,

meaningless to minds set in tradition

and premature weariness for celebrating routine.

(I never understood it either):

Being fond of dolls then

I got a new one every year

packaged in paper and parent-love.

I ripped away wrappings

and months of anticipation

to touch my own just born babies,

more real than any mangered child

mysteriously coming in the very olden days.

They cried faucet water tears

(not salty but still strong)

I laughed at their damp faces

sometimes.

No one ever told me that santa made money

by stuffing himself in a red rented suit

or that the cookies I left hot for him

were munched by the dog

as I buried my head in a pillow

white with dreams.

It always ended too soon:

hopes flickered away as colored lights blinked

into black

brittle needles left trails behind the retreating tree

and the nativity surrendered the TV top to magazines.

Songs fled the streets and people forgot to smile

snow melted

and dolls lay broken on a closet shelf.

I shall make no neat list this year

(carefully itemized from Sears' catalog);

needing nothing in the way of plastic infants

I ask for truer gifts:

that I might glow sharper than any tinselled star

showing God's good love to every inkeeper

and all astonished shepherds.