| In its dance throughout the year,
The sun rides high, then it dips low.
Days grow short, and people fear
That light will wane and darkness grow.
And as the night overwhelms the day,
With even noontime shadows long
The spirits ebb, and people say
The blackness rises from below.
And yet the dance past nadir goes,
And the sun stops dipping, again does rise
So people's psychic hope 'gain flows
And joy returns within their eyes.
--- Happy whatever.
Steve Kallis, Jr.
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| Twas the Night Before Christmas
Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the
annual Yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence,
kinetic energy was not in evidence among the possessors of
this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as
MUS MUSCULUS. Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward
edge of the wood burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to out
anticipatory pleasure regarding the imminent visitation from
an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is
the honorific of St. Nicholas. The pre-pubescent, comfortably
esconsed in their respective accommodations of repose, were
experiencing sub-conscious visual hallucinations of variegated
fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums.
My conjugal partner and I attired in our nocturnal head coverings,
were about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when
upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the ground were ascended by
such a cacophony of dissonance, that I felt compelled to arise with
alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the
precise source thereof. Hastening to the casement, I forthwith
opened the barriers sealing this fenestration, noting thereupon
that the lunar brilliance without, reflected as it was upon the
recently crystalline precipitation, might be said to reveal that of
the solar meridian itself, thus permitting my incredulous optical
sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne runnered conveyance
drawn by eight diminutive specimens of the genus RANGIFER, piloted
by a minuscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble, that it
became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated
caller. With his ungulate motive power traveling at what may have
been vertiginous velocity, than patriotic alar predators, he
vociferated loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted
labia, and addressed each of the octet by his or her respective
cognomen--now Dasher, now Dancer, et al., guided them to the uppermost
exterior level of our abode through which structure I could readily
distinguish the concatenations of each of the thirty-two cloven pedal
extremities.
As I retraced my cranium from its erstwhile location, and was
performing a 180 degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved,
with the utmost celerity and via a downward leap, entry by way of the
smoke passage. He was clad entirely in animal pelts, soiled by the
ebony residue of oxidations of carboniferous fuels, which had
accumulated on the walls thereof. His resemblance to a street vendor
I attributed largely to the plethora of assorted playthings, which he
bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle his orbs were
scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary dermal
indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability. The
capillaries of his molar regions and nasal appurtenance were
engorged with blood with suffused in subcutaneous layers, the
former approximating the coloration of Albion's floral emblem,
the latter that of PRUNUS AVIUM, or sweet cherry. His
amusing sub- and supra-labials resembled nothing so much as a common
loop knot, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water. Clenched
firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose gray fumes,
forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were suggestive of a
decorative seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it
was high and when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal
region undulated in a manner of inpectinated fruit syrup in a
hemisherical container. He was, in short, neither more nor
less than an obese, jocund, multi-genarian gnome, the optical
perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome, despite every
effort to refrain from being so. By rapidly lowering and then
lowering one eyelid, and rotating his head slightly to one side, he
indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless.
Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the
aforementioned hoseriery with various of the aforementioned articles
of merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally
transported cloth receptacle. Upon completion of his task, he
executed an abrupt about face, placed a singular manual digit in
lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium
forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith effected his
egress by renegotiating, in reverse, the smoke passage.
He then propelled himself, in a short vector, onto his
conveyance, directed a musical expulsion of air through his contracted
oral sphincter to the antlered quadrupeds of burden, and preceded to
soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable chiefly among the seed
bearing portions of a common weed. But I overheard his parting
exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the
limits of visibility, an ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary
constituency. And to that self-same assemblence, my sincerest wishes
for a salubriously beneficial and gratifyingly pleasurable period
between sunset and dawn.
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