When I stopped believing

[dukealien]

When I stopped believing

no shining revelation nor vision in the night
but a creeping realisation that something wasn't right
too many questions without answer and he gently fell from grace perhaps "so" or "'til" to show consequential relationship in place of "and"
I am orphaned by my father with none to take his place. this seems to fit neither God nor St. Nick, but the feeling is right... better word than "orphaned?"

so I laid that final straw and like the snow-drift in the field a line with no skipped beat here
my heart began to slowly thaw and the awful truth revealed
that I was blissful in my blindness though misguided by my kin
to a witness of each kindness and the consequence of sin. somewhat twisty way of saying "he knows when you've been bad or good" was a useful myth... but on first read, hard to decipher

but now that I am older with empty skies above oh, you're definitely trying for that God/St.N ambiguity! (g)
the world is that much colder without his gift of love
when I stopped believing
winter came hard that day
for ever he was leaving
with reindeer to guide his sleigh. saved the reveal for the very end - excellent!

---

Nice, with a sneaky turn at the end (if, as I did, the reader begins the first time through thinking the no longer believed-in is God rather than his Saint Nicholas).

However, what the poem gains by that delightful plot is somewhat compromised by the sometimes forced rhyme and, especially, lack of definite meter.  Each line seems to have a randomly placed skip-beat, seldom in the same place twice; I believe a regular meter (violated for dramatic purposes) could really strengthen its impact.

One example (please pardon the rewrite)...  you have

     but now that I am older [beat] with empty skies above

which could be

     but now that I am older seeing empty skies above 

for a simple two-beat meter.  You needn't go all the way to a patter lyric, but perhaps try saving the missed-beat for moments of surprise, like an emphasized comma.

That's about all I have in basic critique... it's a nice conceit, which (when turned back on itself at third reading) tells the reader something about his relationship with a God that (he thinks) failed.