December Traditions
By Amarylis Douglas
My mother could hear Christmas songs
on distant piano keys
I remember my own little girl
learning to walk again after she broke her ankle
crutch under one arm, violin under the other
into her first holiday concert
black velvet dress, white lace collar and cuffs
yellow curls, clear blue eyes
we should have known belonged in heaven
She and her grandmother liked to wear a holiday pin.
I remember when I was a girl, I watched
my mother place one white candle in each window.
My daughter liked to light the windows again.
They both hoped that a lonely stranger,
walking down the street, could look up
see the lights, stop for a bit, listen to the silence
that silent night
Then he would remember his own boyhood home
his own soft flannel pajamas
his first red plaid Christmas bathrobe
Every year, mid-December, my mother would take
a cooking spoon and a teapot of boiling water
to break the frozen dirt in her flower boxes
under the windows in the front of the house
to make a hole to press the green branches in
to push the traditions in,
the memories, the lights, the night
the songs that she and her granddaughter
could hear on distant piano keys
Amarylis Douglas lives in Vineyard Haven. Her book, “The Fellowship of the Rain,” was published in 2020. Her writing also appears in “Pathways Arts” and in “Our Place: An Anthology of Berkshire Hills Poets.”
Poets with a connection to Martha’s Vineyard are encouraged to submit poems to community@mvtimes.com. Please include a two- or three-sentence bio.
