Holiday Folly

Claustrophobic lines of shoppers,
Children stretching to parents’ arms
Away from Santa Claus’s ho ho ho,
The grinchy noises, boxes, bags; the folly —
All this wrapped up in ever-cycling lyrics
To create some commercialized perversion of beauty.

I try to find some other hidden beauty
In the humanity of frantic, struggling shoppers,
In the season’s well-known lyrics.
I try to shake my head and raise my arms
To shake the fog from this frenetic folly,
To give myself the confidence to “tally ho!”

But caught within a web of holly holly ho-
-ly, the holy somehow lost in mistle-toed beauty
That blinks the green and red of holly. Folly.
And I am part of it, a shopper among shoppers
Grabbing, needing, wanting, buying, outstretched arms
With new cacophony of tune and tired lyrics.

I try to re-recall, again, again, the lyrics
Of more than jolly refrains of Santa’s ho ho ho,
Of more than salvation army bells as calls to arms
Against the bleak impoverished pot-red beauty
Of loose change dropped by guiltless mindless shoppers
Who through clanking quarters free themselves of their folly.

And then the laughter bubbles, unbounded folly
And I find inside unwritten lyrics,
Unconscious blessings toward the unknowing shoppers
And refreshed possibilities of the ho-
-lidays that lead to unsuspected beauty
Beyond the reach of ordinary arms.

Here lies the stronger call to arms.
Here lie responses to the superficial folly.
A silent, sacred, unseen beauty
In silent, sacred, unheard lyrics
That guide us toward new ho-
-pe. Hope. Hope for all, including shoppers.

This is the way to sing the beauty of the lyrics
To defeat the folly of the ho ho ho
To embrace within our arms those all-too-human shoppers.


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