Tuesday, December 25, 2012

A Red Winter's Tale

He woke up from a deep snooze
- it had nothing to do with booze -
but just the sheer exhaustion from all that wrapping
simply sent him into the sweet land of napping.

He found himself staring at his red-covered toes.
That is, if he looked around the various colored bows
down toward his propped-up feet.
Propped up on his desk piled with letters from all over the world.
A pretty neat feat
if you really thought about it.
Suddenly, he coughed and some letters flew around and swirled
down to the floor.

But, they were all caught, as usual,
by a couple of his little friends.
He thought that way because they WERE his friends
not just helpers.
They stood on each other's shoulders and handed
him the letters back for his careful perusal.
They suddenly fell over and, like the cat
perched up on top of the bakery oven, landed
all on their red-stockinged feet.

Reading them all once was quite a chore,
twice could actually become a bore.
Kind of like the color red around here,
he thought, reaching for his thick, dark beer.
He relit his long white pipe and took a deep puff,
sometimes, he though, he had had quite enough
of all this color red.  He had recently
began wearing some green
but his wife called him out, rather indecently
it seemed
and the thought of that caused his merry eyes to gleam.

He laughed and laughed, shaking himself out of this reverie.
He had work to do, and lots of it!
He brought his feet down and began to put on his big, black boots.
The cat jumped down and headed for the dairy.
Even the mice around here were accorded their freedom
and had nothing to fear from the cat.
That, despite that, was still rather fat.
Too many cookies probably...

He put on his very heavy coat
and headed toward the door to the wrapping room.
There, he had great cause to gloat
over what his eyes beheld.
His labor of love spread out before him
like a collection of shinging gems.
So many trees had to have been felled
to provide such colorful paper.

The scurring of hundreds of little feet
caused him to exclaim, as they all came to attention,
"Good work to all, everything is really quite neat!"
His mind seemed to be trying to remember something
(he was lately having trouble with retention)
when the sound of bells sounded off somewhere behind him.

He turned right around
and there was the source of that sound!
Eight reindeer standing in the yard,
one of them holding the reigns.
Was it already that time?
He ran toward the sleigh and, with a bound
belieing his size, lept into it
and sat himself right down.

The elves installed the reindeer just right
and, as he prepared to take off into the night,
he checked behind him for the big sack of gifts.
Then, he shook the reigns
and shouted for all to hear,
"Merry Christmas all, and to all great cheer!"
as he took off on his flight
'round the world to bring joy
to all children dreaming of Christmas and maybe a toy.
No matter girl or boy,
he would always be there for them.
for Mary, Bobby, Alice and Jim.

As he faded into the skies,
on his annual trip through the stars,
bringing dollies, puppets and cars.
he probably did not hear all the little cries
from the elves as they replied
"And Merry Christmas to you too, you jolly old elf!"
while errupting into much applause
for they had the greatest job in the world,
working for the one and only Santa Claus!

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mindbringer, 24 December 2012