Every year
Christmas sinks into my bones through Penatatonix tones
And ice-cream cones and skimming stones on Tsitsikamma lagoons.
Christmas sinks into my bones on Pretoria stoeps and in swimming pools
And under clouds split by the fire and flash of summer-warm thunderstorms.
But now
Christmas plans are red-list canned.
We’re on the top half of a world gone mad.
No bone-of-our-bone coming to see our brave new land.
And there’s a strange Christmas crisis in my heart.
So now
Christmas is the new magic of
Roasted chestnuts and reindeer sweaters
Holly in the hedges growing and glowing holy red
Lights glistening on the river silent like stars in a Bethlehem sky
Stockings hung from a mantlepiece and dark hot chocolate afternoons
Snow flurries and school run hurries as laughing boys scrape ice off the windscreen.
And a fresh wondrous different Christmas sinks into my bones.
But all these shiny-happy shimmerings
Are just the tiny cardboard doors of Advent calendars
Opening the smallest window onto wonder and pointing to
The end of the age when we’ll stand on a different shore entirely, eternally.
There the light never fades.
There we’ll meet Hope Himself:
The manger-laid King whose broken body broke darkness.
No more weary-world groans before that glory throne:
Hope fulfilled flooding our brand-new bones.

I love your writing style x
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My heart breaks for you, Mum & Dad, as you “put on the new” for your boys; when your pandemic-weary bones long for your “normal” 💕 But then, what is “normal”? – its a whole different (new) world for everyone – even the “old bones” left behind! So, throw yourself into the new, for the sake of your childrens’ futures; take to heart all the new normals; create new traditions, and realize that we ALL “move on” in times such as this 😢 So wonderful to receive this message – I’ve been lost without them 😘
With love from a pandemic-weary “old bone” who is struggling with the “new-norm 😉 Wishing you a Blessed Christmas 🎄🎄 Carrie Carter 🙏🙏
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Hi Dalene,
This poem is so beautifully written expressing the 2 different wonders of your previous Christmases and the new.
We wish you and your family a very Blessed Christmas.
Miss you all
With much love from us both, Judy and Freddie
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Ohhh… so beautiful
Sending lots of Sunshine love from the South (even though its a rainy grey day)
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Miss you enormously dear Gwen! x
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