04-15-2023, 09:06 AM
I never much cared for holidays,
a dysfunctional family made sure of that
and even after marriage and kids
we had to make the pilgrimage
and sit through the stomach churning dinners
waiting for the explosion, sobs, and anger.
But there was one special Christmas,
after I’d left home and lived in a cheap rent house,
with a week off work and my housemate absent.
I spent it eating homemade split pea soup
sitting in a rocking chair next to a space heater
reading Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom
transported away from those holiday blues.
Keep your Christ in Christmas,
but let me have my Faulkner if you please,
and don’t leave the ham hocks out of the soup.
a dysfunctional family made sure of that
and even after marriage and kids
we had to make the pilgrimage
and sit through the stomach churning dinners
waiting for the explosion, sobs, and anger.
But there was one special Christmas,
after I’d left home and lived in a cheap rent house,
with a week off work and my housemate absent.
I spent it eating homemade split pea soup
sitting in a rocking chair next to a space heater
reading Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom
transported away from those holiday blues.
Keep your Christ in Christmas,
but let me have my Faulkner if you please,
and don’t leave the ham hocks out of the soup.