Those out there who know the pain and inconsolable grief associated with having an alienated child might best relate to this poem — and also understand why I am unable to read this poem out loud to make an audio version, like other poems on this site:
(You can ‘right-click’ with the mouse on this image and choose ‘open in a new tab’ and then click the image in that tab again to enlarge, in order to see the larger more readable version — or read the full plain text of the poem below)
Christmas Day 2020
(for my Daughter)
Spiders have still insisted on
Decorating the corners of my dreary room
With their own drab and dusty gossamer
Birds yet hop, crying thinly among
The naked boughs and branches
Seeking the final persimmon
Hanging like a baleful bauble
A pallid winter sun sits low
A bleached and brooding Christmas Star
Atop sad pines mourning the passing of the year
Its wintry light icily festoons the frozen
Landscape laid bare before me
As cold winds continue to caress
The leaves yet clinging to the weeping willow
Tempting them to fly to final doom
And icy fingers also wrap themselves
Around my sundered, aching heart
Holding it together in my heaving breast
Feeling its faint, forlorn rhythm marking
This time that by your malformed choice
Callously crafted by a malicious spirit
You are gone from my life leaving
My soul brittle, barren and bereft
As chilled as this cold world that
Surrounds me on this brightly, blinding
Mournful, mirthless so-called Christmas Day
Copyright © 2020 Al G Smith / algsmith.com