A Christmas Tree is of course a dead thing
Another corpse dressed up in expectation
Like a body at an open-casket
Arrayed in white
Raised only to be
Cut down
Displayed for a season
Then forgotten
–
Or sometimes the tree
Never lived to begin with
And is just a plastic facsimile
Molded from some petroleum alchemy
Drawn from the remains
Of dinosaur flesh and sea algae
That predate Eve and Adam
by Eons
–
In any case
We keep on dressing up
Our dead
In expectation
Of some distant eternity
When the eons between
the most primordial algae
and us
Will feel
Briefer
Than the year between
each annual Christmas
Briefer
than the space between
when the tree is trimmed
and the tree torn down
Briefer
than the flicker
of a single colored bulb
Lost behind the branches
By the wall
So brief
That the interval
can scarcely be said
to have existed
–
At least when compared
To the endless length
Of death to come
And death overcome