Christmas 2003
Soon the tinsel, bells and balls
hang again in rooms and halls
Christmas feast!
Before our preparations cease
we set upon our mantlepiece
The Babe, not least!
We’ve kept you carefully packed away
Safely for each birthing day
For fifty years!
Fifty wrapping done with care
as if some holiness were there
And not the tears!
Little image, little crèche
Little God becoming flesh
receive our grief!
Plaster mother, painted Child,
uniquely you are undefiled;
Hast thou relief?
Copyright © 2003 -
Harold Macdonald, Poems from the Eighth Decade