Escaping December 2

Autumn’s assured tones fade

as age old fears

silver your hair and knot

your frozen fingers.

Winter takes you by the hand

and leads a weary path

into December.

You mix cocoa for your invalid

who has escaped

to re-fight the conquered enemy

in foreign lands.

Leaving you to stay and fight,

to guard his home front

entrenched in sand.

Long, unfulfilled nights stretch

toward the end

accompanied but alone

through wasteful years.

You check the carriage clock,

a golden wedding present

its chime insincere.

Sharing powdered pills between

two cocoa cups,

you extinguish the light

and sound a final retreat.

Escaping December I

Miss Honey spends her Christmases abroad,

Saga jet her off to winter sun.

Convalescing from her latest face-lift

and the varicose veins that she’s had done.

She engages handsome Spanish waiters

in verbal intercourse to pass the time,

drinking in sunshine and sangria

she sings out ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

She dances away the early evenings

and hardly wears her outfits more than twice.

Mornings by the pool she spends relaxing

penning postcards from her ‘paradise’.

At home the best her sister can hope for

is a milder spell to break the freezing cold

as she warms arthritic hands on one bar,

an extravagance she barely can afford.

She wears her wardrobe of old cardigans,

tangling with a stubborn envelope.

An invitation to another funeral

she eyes the postcard from her sister, Hope.

She remembers family holidays in Spain

longs for the endless days of summer.

She looks once more at the invitation
wishing she could escape December.