Christmas Presents Treasure Hunt Poem by David Harris

Every year on the first of December
the annual Christmas presents treasure hunt begins.
During the January sales, my wife and I buy
our Christmas presents for the on coming year,
buy them and hide them
and each year we forget where we hid them too.
One year I had a bright idea,
I would draw up a little map,
then my wife decided on a spring clean
moving furniture from one room to another
which rendered my little map rather obsolete.
Hence, the treasure hunt began
and when we had found most of them,
another problem then arose
about who were the presents for.
We drew up a list of everyone
and attached a present to their name,
but nothing is straightforward in our house,
backward maybe.
The list was binned
and we had to start again.
In our search for Christmas presents
something more surprising is what came to light,
a five-year old box of mouldy chocolates
that we had bought for someone
but could not remember who.
Waste not, want not is the key words here,
now who don’t we like
these mouldy old chocolates we will give to them
for their treat this year.
As for all those missing presents that we couldn’t find,
it looks like shopping again
and maybe next year we’ll find the ones we lost
and sit down to figure out someone who we can give them to.