The Christmas Market

Those brown leaves beneath the brush

whisper to me what it means to be alive

and their husk of language sounds

like the slogan at the zavvi store –

Take the Nightmare out of Christmas.

But nightmares bind the cortex

in chains, and online pop-up

catalogues spam my brain with links

to jingling ring-tones. In my sleep,

radiators clank tills and trolleys spill

onto horror aisles where Barbie dolls

squeal Fairytale of New York all night

in harsh mono. Security guards scissor

pockets stuffed with debit cards and drain

syrup from tins, their methods senseless

and inscrutable as clouds delivering

a year of rain in the month’s first hour,

a gush of floods that rush the bric-a-brac

from my lounge to a newly-trashed motel

before I wake up and sweep the drive.

Mid-morning, the Salvation Army brass

strikes up Silent Night, and clove-scent

saturates the Christmas market

with the cathedral’s choir of bells.

The dry suspicion of what it means

to be alive and unprotected

is interrupted by my daughter asking

for snow – now! – tomorrow too distant

even to dream. She has fifty pence

in her fist and lifts it to the sky.