Our Christmas cards are sent,
riding away on ZIP codes and good nature.
Cards trickle in a few a day
and say about what we had said
plus a broken ankle or a bought house.

Our light-filled tree
with presents around its roots
gives and gives to the living room.

Soon will be family celebrations
where ribbons and wrapping paper
suggest swaddling clothes
and the heart will say yes, okay.
Humor will be high and faces flushed
as wanna-haves come out of boxes
and druther-haves fail to quite show up.

This drama time is bigger than everybody
as the kindly solstice breathes love to earth
in lung-sized packages
for giving and forgiving onwardly.

Let us have Christmas in all its outer glory
and, after thinking it over,
we may inwardly say thank you
and feel blessed.