Where is YOUR Christmas Tree Tonight?

However festive New Year's is for people,
It is a bad time for Christmas trees.
With unemployment pushing 100%
And all their decorations in hock
They make do as best they can:
Sleeping in trash bins,
Aimlessly hanging around suburban streets,
Or lurking in alleyways
As if waiting to pounce on some unwary victim.
Perhaps some actually do --
I have seen pictures of Christmas trees in jail.

Others find their way into other institutions
Including
The Christmas Tree Retirement Homes.
There's one just a few blocks away.
To me it's rather depressing
But then I'm not a Christmas tree:
Room after room of almost-bare branches, tarnished tinsel,
     and burned-out bulbs,
And someone constantly playing scratchy records 
     of Christmas carols.

There are presents under the trees
But no children to open them.
Santa brings them all through the year
For the trees to watch over
Until his next Christmas rounds --
Something about "smoothing out the work load".
But still, the trees enjoy his frequent visits.

Their only really sad time is Christmas itself
When nothing happens but memories,
And the days right after
When a new generation of trees comes in.

They see the families bidding their trees farewell
And promising to write or visit often,
But they know from experience
That those promises 
Are almost always broken.


                                        Thomas G. Digby
                                        written 0430 hr 1/12/80
                                        typed   0355 hr 1/19/80
                                        entered 2235 hr 4/12/92