The Third Day of Christmas

How It Hits YouPicking up the Christmas postfrom the old house,I unclench my fingers one by one from the steering wheel,breathe out.And in the lowering lightagainst the hills of someone else’s home,the yellow advent squares of the traincome close to the road we...

The Second Day of Christmas

A Christmas UniverseFor CharlotteThis year you’ve grown too old for anagrams,
that devil’s name within a Santa hat.
You tell me that you have no need of things
or wishes that you’ll later learn to curse:
the Midas touch, the genii trickster’s lamp
are all behind...

The First Day of Christmas

The Expat and the Angel Come to LunchI had high hopes. I have prepared mutabel and labneh, Arabic bread, salad leaves from Saudi, fresh conversation. My Englishneighbour shares her views on lazy maids, her husband's job in small drill bits, the cost of water,...

Fiona Sinclair's 'White Christmas'

'White Christmas'  When the Christmas Eve snow silenced the trafficthat screamed through our village,mother and I , stolen chocolate andfrowning school report forgotten,trespassed with present opening thrillinto the middle of the highwayand thumbing our...

The Eleventh Day of Christmas

The Winter Outing of the Woolhope Naturalists Field Club, December 1870The ladies of the party are helped over the stileby whiskered botanists fond of a well turned ankle.Miss Taylor draws a notebook from her beaded reticuleand writes “The bunch of mistletoe was so...

The Tenth Day of Christmas

SnowWinter comes with the half-remembrance of rainand the sudden opening out of the city into wide white vistas of snow.A trail of footprints through unsullied whiteness,brings a memory of shuffling home frozen-footedwhere orange street light created pools and...