Remembering Christmas, a poet said: “December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers.” The snow was like a living thing: “It came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss. …”
That was Wales. And this is California. December on the weather side of the East Bay hills may produce the odd sunny day. I’m not complaining that we don’t have more. But mostly, it’s gray, as gray as the sopping thick felted clouds stretching overhead from the hills a mile to the east all the way past Hawaii to the tropics. No sunset, no moonrise, no stars. Just the same blanket of heavy, sodden gray pressing down day after day.
At least it’s warm.
(Pictured above: Codornices Creek, where it exits the city storm drains for the Bay, during a heavy rain on Thursday; most of the year, the channel is just a trickle. Beyond the reclaimed soccer field on the right is a big new Target store, and beyond that is the interchange for Interstates 80 and 580.)
While I have not spent more than a month in a snowy environment I have always preffered the ideal of the Wales version of winter. Here I am in Tokyo, currently about the only place in Japan not being blanketed by the white stuff. Another non-white christmas for me.
Christmas in Tokyo
as delicate doves
fluttering
paper mache blossoms
from the sky
white evanescence
come to blanket
the frigid december earth
peaking through protective
curtains
I am no longer dreaming of sugar plums-
another Christmas,
no snow.
Christmas in the Maryland Piedmont is usually cool and snow-free. I think there’s only been one white Christmas here in last 25 years. But it’s not gray.
Best to you this holiday season.
K-