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,

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