The Holidays Poem by Lonnie Hicks

Why are they called holidays? '
she said
'they never are;
more like feeling someone
is destroying the road behind you
as you walk toward the sunset;
or like having the past be a dark shroud
thrown over you as you journey to a past
you left or didn't like.

How can I long for my childhood and still be a grownup?
How to wring from the holiday meal
love, respect, revenge all these things
from a repast?
And how quickly the past returns
when it was the past you wanted most to outrun?
How quickly the old relationships re-establish
just like they had never gone.
Change and no-change sit to eat
yet neither adequately reflect the truths we all live.
So parallelisms and false similes abound;
we all sit-no way forward; no way back; no way around;
home is not so sweet
because it lives in its own iron time warp
and time is what homes are supposed to forge
new
independent identities.

My plane circled over head
hesitating to land
since there is no runway to the future
only runways to the past.
Yet there I must be 'for
for yet another holiday.

I call Mom and she gives me joy
and that guilt which says
why haven't you called
and did her gift
of winter mittens
arrive in my mailbox in Florida?

The house before me,
the room I lived in
have been preserved
just like I still lived there;
time stood still in mom's mind.

It is suddenly clear to me
she wants
me back in the room of my childhood
and once again age eleven.
But alas, it is not true
I am all grown up;
the bed doesn't fit anymore-
but just for her I pretend it does-
and phoney up a smile
for the sake of the holiday-ness.

This is the Stance of Love we give
our moms and dads
which allow them just once a year
to re-fill
their empty nests
and for us kids
who willingly
or unwillingly
reconnect
things old
with things new
which gives us
the mix and brew
we sip
just before
the year
new;
it's taste
bitter sweet
with Ironies
on our tongue.