A Long Cold Christmas

The air is cold now and
It will probably stay that way for a while and
I don’t mind
Not yet at least
The decorations are up and
As of today
So are the lights and
Though it took an hour to get them up and
A few minutes
To get the feeling back in my fingers
It didn’t bother me
The tree went up and
We all decorated it together
With Christmas carols playing in the background
The decorations may not be enough to hide the fact that
It is a homely and crooked little tree but
I don’t care
Twenty candy canes bunched together on
Three branches and
Normally that would have bothered me so much
That I would have dispersed them immediately but
I waited a whole two hours
Until the kids were asleep
To spread them all over the tree
Under the watchful eye of the Elf on the Shelf
Who was staring at me from the curtain rod
Where he will wait all night to be discovered
The kind of waiting that always drives me nuts
Except now I’m unfazed by the prospect of waiting
For Christmas to come
Underneath our Christmas Tree
I’m actually hoping to have a lot of time
To watch the cold materialize
In the glow of the Christmas Lights
It is cold now
If I’m lucky
It will be cold for some time