Of Time and Tidings
It's Christmas week and I am driving to a local diner
to meet an old friend; Friday's snow skulks in the gutter.
Donna's CD "Best of Christmas Cocktails" plays smoothly,
Dean Martin slurring, "Winter Wunnerland." I imagine Dino
with martini clutched in hand, and I think, "Was it then
that we began to lose Christmas -- the holiday mutating
into the sell-out that it has become -- all honesty bartered
for commercial profits?" I order bacon and eggs; Dan, retired,
walking with a cane, orders omelette with scrapple on the side
-- such a proletarian meat! We've known each other forty years,
half a lifetime; we spend time talking about all the people we've known:
aye, so many passed on, but we survive. Later, driving to the bank,
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I'm singing variations on "God rest ye merry gentlemen ... God pest
ye manic mental men.... Rod invest ye gentle merrymen... God rest."
Christopher T. George
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