I see you bare, bound, huddled, hope lost on the eve
of presents opening at your chosen brethen’s feet,
carted off on roof racks, in truck-beds, carried to light-strung homes,
stood upright, arms out-stretched,
for candy canes, shiny apples a fishing bear, santa on skates, Rudolph, Jesus,
paper, plastic, metal, shell, glass, pictures of children past,
tips crowned with angels, stars, symbols of birth deemed sacred,
bodies aglow, trunk skirted,
adorned by a family, graced with a window view.
And here you lean, forlorn, forgotten, forsaken,
only a chipper on your horizon,
mulch, wooden shards of a once Noble Fir
to blanket Bleeding Hearts, Forget Me Nots,
a gift to soil, to seeds opening, roots deepening, life awakening,
an end, perhaps, more worthy, than the tinsel-bedecked tree,
discarded at season’s end, tossed in a landfill,
with a lone crimson apple still strung on a drying branch,
attractive, but inedible, to the gathering of worms,
who may or may not be tempted to bite.
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