As a toddler, I fully embraced the dream of a magical white Christmas, though it was starkly different from the chronically green SC town where I lived.
Christmas cards, songs, and shows transported me. I was enchanted by images of snow-swept hills; old firs weeping with ice-cycles; stately snowmen; and sleepy white-capped cottages draped with lights. I was so captivated by these images, I superimposed them over my surroundings until they seemed more real than the truth.
For a time, I even persisted in believing it was supposedto snow on Christmas, even though, where I lived, it never did. The dream was simply more compelling than what I saw around me.
This is a poem I wrote shortly after I graduated from college, dealing with the contrast between my culture-induced illusions about the holiday and my own, less dramatic experience.
Happy New Year everyone!
Sunblast
Here
The Sunblast blinds us
Until we think we see snowmen
We wonder if the beaches of
Mistle-toe-decked Charleston
Are frozen yet –
Chunks of sand crumbling
Like crushed ice
If waves are frozen
In mid-air
So solid a toddler in red and green
Mittens could
Slip-
along –
the-
surface-
in-
sockfeet-
Lick the snow-encrusted crests of waves
Admire the mountains of water
In the distance
Meanwhile
We tread on itchy too-green grass,
Scratch the sweat off our skins,
And hang jolly cardboard Santas
Over porches of dust