Christmas Bulbs

I miss the Christmas bulbs back then

almost the size of tulip bulbs they were so emphatic

and the light that glowed in them well it seemed that if

you rooted them in the ground flowers in glass blown colours

would emerge and long before Spring. I miss them so.

they lined the roofs, like outlines in a Christmas colouring book

of the entire town

and when you were allowed outside at night and could see your breath

make frost in the cold you saw them and the colours ached like the cold

and you thought to your young self these are Christmas lights

this is how I will remember them. This will never change.

how could you know they would diminish over the years becoming a mere twinkling

that small white lights barely distinguishable from no light at all would predominate

and be thought elegant; but you thought like Dorothy, this is not home.

but I never agreed to that. I want the bulbs, the orange, the violet, the mint green, unmistakable in Glory

the blazing red the child deep blue, lemon yellow almost like candies in a way on the tree or fruits of the sun and loads of icicles reflecting all

the colours making it all the more resplendent

and everywhere let them return christening all the roofs with a crystalline Christmas celerity, clarity

maybe then we can sing Christmas merrier and really mean we ourselves are the glass bells we are ringing it in we are that beyond joy

and put on the old records where all the choruses sounded for the world

like sheer angels and you knew that Heaven was on earth

it had to be

from the day He was born. because it was happening all over again

and this is why there was so much radiance.

mary angela douglas 23 february 2021