COLD AND BLEAK DECEMBER

COLD AND BLEAK DECEMBER

It's a cold and bleak December, or is it only me?
My eyes jaundiced and blurry make it difficult to see.
Here in the month of tinsel and tease,
I live alone with this bitter disease.

Here in this month of the Christmas birth,
Where carols sing of joy and mirth,
All I can sing is my bitter song.
You can sing along if you know the words,
The words of death and wasted breath,
From the baffled beaks of angry birds.

It's a cold and bleak December,
The month we laid my parents to rest.
The days that both my mother and father,
Succumbed to their brutal snows.
The month that puts me to the test,
When caught up in its throes.

The flowers in the sanctuary,
They somehow lift my mood.
If only for a moment, the landscape seems less bare.
The problem is my attitude and not perhaps the frigid air.
The poinsettias, they brighten,
In white and scarlet hues,
This cold and bleak December,
And these Godforsaken blues.

Oh, for the time when I could move freely,
And school was out for the holiday,
And the fat man in his red suit,
Held me in his ho-ho sway.
Those simpler times of childhood,
They seem so far away.

Oh, for the time when I was footloose,
The days I wandered where I chose.
Dressed to the nines from shirt to shoes,
Days as fragrant as the vagrant rose.
Oh, for the time when my triumphs were many
And my trials so very few,
Before the brain cells once so plenty,
Deserted me for pastures new.

Now that I'm an older man, and see through older eyes.
I miss I guess my glory days, and the present fills with sighs.
Sighs for my health and for an average wealth,
Before the insurance premiums sucked my wallet dry.
Before the alien winter ice fell like a demon from the sky.
Back when I could work a job, back when I had a calling,
Back before the meds and surgery, before the random falling.
All I take from winter now is an inconsolable chill,
And the tidings of a tiny child, poinsettias in the windowsill.

Mary and Joseph and that glorious birth,
That back then thrilled the hearts of men.
That brought the wisemen and the shepherds,
Bearing gifts across the glen.
That filled their hearts with Christmas joy,
The man that grew from that precious boy.
Let me be one of the growing throng,
That lift their voice in glorious song.
Not to wallow in guilt and pain,
But find some shelter from the rain.

Lord, you know my anxious heart, you know what I believe.
It's just the more time passes, the more I find to grieve.
Send me down some sweet relief, pardon now my unbelief.
Forgive my sad and rank complaint,
A better landscape help me paint.
This cold and bleak December, let it quietly, quickly fade,
Erase my tearful memories, bring roses from the nightshade.

-Bruce Potts
Copyright 2012
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED