Christmas Pyre by Margaret V. Doran

Christmas Pyre

Margaret V.Doran

Carefully planted as young
seedlings barely twelve inches
high: brave little spiky,
spindly, sappy branches

Meticulously spaced six feet
each way in the spring
while green and tender
to grow stronger

Each year sheared by
aliens wielding machetes
in expert swings to
fashion each perfectly

Shaped clone cone of green
exact replicas of each other
growing taller each year;
closer to the end

After six years of taking
money and care and
providing tax shelters
and homes for birds

They begin to be harvested
and are flagged and cut down
starting November first each year
to become Christmas trees

Their purpose fulfilled as
they are stacked and inserted
one at a time into the
bowels of the machine

Which ties each full, lush tree
into a narrow pole wrapped
with twine
ready for transport

By tractor, by helicopter,
by truck, by trailer, by ship,
by pickup and car top
to fill contracts

with department stores and grocery
stores and corner lots and
Boy Scout Troops to be sold
to make money for all

Is this the Christmas spirit
of America and its people
making money every season
me, you and the middle-man?

Back in the field
there are still tax shelters
which are too many and which
will never be carried away

Some - tho’ very few - are donated
to a "worthy cause" to make
more money and some - fewer still -
may be donated to poor people

So everyone can have a perfect
Christmas tree to decorate
and gaze at and somehow pretend
that things are different

That maybe circumstance will change
and perhaps it will get better
because of that perfectly sheared
clone that they were lucky to get

But they don’t see the field
denuded and muddy with
only dead stumps and deep
tractor ruts running through

Around the edges, trees
cut down and bundled, not
wanted, not shipped, just left-over
residue to be disposed of

In January when the festivities
are over and everyone has more
time to get the job done, they
are piled in great pyramid mounds

Someone - I wonder who - pours
on diesel and strikes a match,
the excesses are burned in a
great, towering death pyre

As the flames consume the lower
bundles and eat their way up
to the top in a glowing inferno
of heat and destruction

Until all that remains is a pile
of ash and one slender trail
of smoke spiraling slowly in the
foggy, grey January day

Written in response to "Burning the Christmas Greens" by William Carlos Williams

Updated July 1, 1999
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