A Christmas Tradition Rides the Bus

The Bug and I were married December 15, 1990.  That first Christmas our friends and family were lucky just to see our smiling faces - we were, among other things, busy writing thank you cards, not Christmas cards.  The next year, 1991, we wrote personal notes in select Christmas cards, and we think our notes were fairly poetic.  Foolishly, we did not keep a copy of what we wrote.  Who knows - it might have been pure genius!  In 1992, we began a tradition that we continue to this day - sending out a poem with our Christmas cards.  As for the writing, some years have been far more challenging than others, and yet we try.  We alternate, for the most part, who is the primary author (The Bug keeps a score card - of course!), and style can vary significantly.  Some poems get heavily edited by the non-author and are true collaborations, while others go out just as they were first written.  At this point in the game, all we really remember is who wrote the first version.  In any event, with our 20th anniversary just around the corner, I thought I would share with you the Christmas poem I wrote on the occasion of our 10th:

The tree is not so big this year,

A compromise, nothing near the size

Of the behemoth it succeeds.

Hard choices must be made,

Not all our old familiar friends

Can nestle in its finite boughs.

Remember Wake Forest, 1991,

A tree much smaller even than this,

Yet big enough for gifts we shared.

Sitting on the bed, one year wed,

Writing notes in some, not all, the cards,

Who knows what we said?  Please tell us!

House, tree, bed, old friends, now gone,

We hold on to memories, mellowing

As they age in the cellars of our hearts.

“Our First Christmas” couple, as then,

Will swing in their heart from a limb,

Midst penguins aplenty, rest assured.

Foghorn Leghorn and Snoopy

And Hallmark keepsakes, by the score,

And souvenirs from far and near

And balls and beads and bells

And bows, red, gold, and purple,

Will trim the tree once more.

Other treasures we’ll set aside,

The joy they bring deferred,

Boxed up but not discarded.

How could they ever be?

Look at them, they are forever

Part of you and me.

Humbly submitted by an exhausted Dr. Linthead as a ticket for this week's Poetry Bus, driven, of all things, by Titus the Dog (thanks, Joanne!).