Christmas Eve

Little house sparkling white
Door wide and for once, welcoming
Aunts and Uncles with cousins and
A Christmas tree and gifts

Stockings named for three children
One of them my mother
that hung along a fireplace
that never shone a flame

Candolier, three in the window
set to light by the local power company
orange bulbs that never died
stuck in faux dripping plastic

Sweet pickles, mayonnaise, cheese sliced
every variety,
roast beef, ham, deli potato salad
What was leftover by night's end
was in small containers
that once held cottage cheese
and butter

Flakes blowing sideways
lay on top on each other in the thousands
like cold bodies decomposing wet and heavy
Boots leaving the scene crunching them to oblivion

Christmas carols on the way home
Dad slowing the car at a blinking red light
in an intersection,
We Three Kings of Orient Are,
His eyes closed, mouth wide
yowling off-key
muffled hollow by the thick snow

We could have gone ahead,
through and toward home
because no one was waiting,
But the three of us sat there at the stop
my mother and me
listening to him singing