{"id":476,"date":"2011-12-26T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-26T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=476"},"modified":"2020-12-14T11:15:34","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T11:15:34","slug":"the-second-day-of-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/the-second-day-of-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"The Second Day of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Christmas Universe<\/span>

<\/font>For Charlotte<\/span><\/font>

This year you\u2019ve grown too old for anagrams,<\/span>
\u2028that devil\u2019s name within a Santa hat.\u2028<\/span>
You tell me that you have no need of things<\/span>
\u2028or wishes that you\u2019ll later learn to curse:\u2028<\/span>
the Midas touch, the genii trickster\u2019s lamp<\/span>
\u2028are all behind you.<\/span>

Oranges, or nuts that you can crack,\u2028<\/span>
chocolate in a stocking by the fire\u2028<\/span>
that you can race to eat before it melts,\u2028<\/span>
that you can suck before the juice runs dry,\u2028<\/span>
that you can squeeze to crack, to break the shell.\u2028<\/span>
A tiny space, a place before the fire,\u2028<\/span>
to have in any order you desire.<\/span>
\u2028It\u2019s all you ask.<\/span>

We sit here, Boxing Day, pyjama clad,\u2028<\/span>
honour silence, nurse a Christmas cold.\u2028<\/span>
Inside our hamlet there\u2019s a universe,<\/span>
\u2028a tardis world that grows in cottage walls\u2028<\/span>
where dreams are birthsongs dancing out a flame,<\/span>
\u2028licking coal to life.<\/span>

You sit squashed up with Tigger on a seat,<\/span>
\u2028read \u2018Lord of the Rings\u2019 time and again.\u2028<\/span>
And in his head your Tigger softly says,\u2028<\/span>
\u2018At fifteen years my friend still loves to bounce.<\/span>
\u2028She springs from tale to tale, from spring<\/span>
\u2028to spring.\u2019<\/span>

I\u2019m curled up in an armchair with this book\u2028<\/span>
writing out a story for myself, feeling like the Pooh-bear<\/span>
\u2028with no brain. Wondering how P-branes intersect to form black holes.\u2028<\/span>
My thoughts are Christmas ribbons tied in knots, discarded labels<\/span>
\u2028from the day before, hiding in a black bag by the door.<\/span>
\u2028I tap, unwrap a chocolate from its box,\u2028<\/span>
so we can suck each segment\u2028<\/span>
and not speak.<\/span>

We wonder why the gentle snowflake falls,\u2028<\/span>
solves, dissolves its secrets on our tongues:<\/span>

Put a mirror in the middle of the water in the walls,<\/span>
\u2028the Christmas birth canal is much too thin a line to carry us.<\/span>

Some nuts, it seems, are much too tough to crack\u2028<\/span>
in the small time we are lent in holidays.<\/span>
<\/p>\n



Julie Boden<\/span><\/a>, Poet in Residence at THSH (2005- date and a former Birmingham Laureate has written many commissioned pieces for the page, stage, radio, live mixed arts events and for film \u2013 she can\u2019t believe she\u2019s written so many Christmas poems !  This poem is published in <\/span>Cut on the Bias<\/span>  collection.<\/span>
<\/p>\n



I took my son to see <\/span>

I.<\/span>



I took my son to see <\/span>

the illuminations. I <\/span>

showed him Latin uncials <\/span>

black after a millennium. <\/span>

He jabbed at the convolutions <\/span>

of leafery, hoping <\/span>

to pull an initial through <\/span>

the page, the case, the glass,<\/span>

the initial he wanted <\/span>

his hand to dishevel:<\/span>

this initial<\/span>

I.<\/span>



*Claire Crowther<\/a><\/span>'s poems have been published widely and she has two collections out from Shearsman plus two recent pamphlets, <\/span>Mollicle<\/span> (Nine Arches) and <\/span>Incense <\/span>(Flarestack).<\/span>


<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Christmas UniverseFor CharlotteThis year you\u2019ve grown too old for anagrams,\u2028that devil\u2019s name within a Santa hat.\u2028You tell me that you have no need of things\u2028or wishes that you\u2019ll later learn to curse:\u2028the Midas touch, the genii trickster\u2019s lamp\u2028are all behind you.Oranges, or nuts that you can crack,\u2028chocolate in a stocking by the fire\u2028that you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twelve-days-of-christmas-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23930,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions\/23930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}