A Christmas Card

Outside all is frozen
All is white and
Silent as night moves
In with a blanket dark
As cloud.

Inside, the tiny coloured
Lights on the tree
Stare unwaveringly at me
In rose, lemon, azure
And green winkings
Peep between the gold and silver
Tinsel.

The crackling of the fire is
Alive with life, it 
Spits and wheezes, whistles at us
As snow sizzles and melts
Into the coals.  Damp black wood
Burns slowly.  Orange flames and
Crimson dance and blaze.
Beyond the windows
Darkness grows.

All the bright white landscape
Is glowing a crystalline
Blue, is crisply glittering 
In the quiet still air and we can
Sense the cold intensify
As darkness solidifies. 

The world is darkly lilac, coldly royal,
A scene to look out on when
Inside all is golden, twinkling, 
Warm.  The steady stars
Stuck in their gleam, are glinting
Across the room amid a
Firmament of fronded green.

I am all eyes and skin.
I drink the scene.
Another Christmas come
And gone.

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